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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 

















The Fascination of the 

Unknown 


By 

THOMAS W. DAVIDSON 

11 

Minister of the Reformed Church on the Heights, 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 



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New York Chicago 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 1923, by 

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



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New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 



To 

My Mother 

First, and Finest Critic 
of my efforts 

as a Preacher of the Gospel. 


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Introduction 


F OR every explorer the fringe upon the edge 
of a newly discovered continent suggests 
the undiscovered country that lies beyond 
the faint, blue horizon. Every time Columbus 
returned to Spain, the secrets of the unknown 
land kept pulling the discoverer back to those 
far off realms, lying behind the clouds. But the 
soul is the true terra incognita —the undiscovered 
country, holding lodes bright with treasure for 
later explorers. Having confessed the fascination 
of the unknown, it must be added that there is also 
a fascination of the known; its known elements of 
truth, and character in a noble man—embodied 
truths by which men live, and for which brave men 
would gladly die. 

Here in Brooklyn we know what manner of man 
is the author of this book. He had his education 
in Belfast, with its university, its lecture-halls and 
its library. He came to our city by way of Mon¬ 
treal in Canada. Today, as pastor of the historic 
Dutch Reformed Church on the Heights, and the 
successor to Drs. Bethune, J. Douglas Adam and 


5 


a 


INTRODUCTION 


F. F. Shannon, he has won a host of admirers. 
His many friends on the Western continent have 
asked that these sermons should be published. 
The people of a church, who listen to such preach¬ 
ing as Dr. Davidson’s, must dwell in a summer¬ 
time, never interrupted by winter. 

Neweee Dwight Hieeis. 

Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, N. Y. 


Preface 


I T gives me very great pleasure to testify to the 
value of these sermons by my friend and fellow 
labourer Dr. Thomas W. Davidson. 

They are earnest, evangelical, persuasive and 
timely homelies which feed the souls of men and 
women and leave lasting satisfaction in the reader’s 
heart. There is nothing laboured or trite in them, 
nor does their excellence do more than exhibit the 
normal ministry of the author. He is well versed 
in the kind of preaching which they represent, and 
he has magnified his ministry by his sound knowl¬ 
edge of the Scriptures and of a true authoritative 
divinity. These discourses should be studied by 
younger preachers and teachers and by all laymen 
who read sermons as a fine example of the profit¬ 
able workman in holy truths, who brings forth 
things new and old from the exhaustless treasury 
of the Word. 

S. Parkes Cadman. 

Central Congregational Church, Brooklyn, N. Y. 


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Contents 


I. The Fascination of the Unknown. 11 
Joshua Hi :4 

II. The Romance oe Religion . . 27 

Matthew v .41 

III. The Garden oe God . . . .43 

The Song of Solomon iv:i 6 

IV. The Soul's Union with Christ . 61 

John xv '.4 

V. The Conquest oe Environment . 76 

Psalm lxviii:i 3 

VI. The Ministry oe Joy . . .91 

Nehemiah viii:io 

VII. The Eternal Reeuge . . .102 

Deuteronomy xxxiii: 2 f 

VIII. Don't Worry. 112 

Psalm xxxvii:i 

IX. The Beauty oe Holiness . . . 128 

Psalm xc:iy 

X. The Landmarks oe Liee . . . 146 

I Samuel vii:i 2 


9 


I 


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I 


THE FASCINATION OF THE UNKNOWN 

" Ye have not passed this way heretofore ” 

—Joshua 3:4. 

T HIS was the message of God to the Hebrew 
people of old, at the close of their wander¬ 
ings in the wilderness. For the most part 
it had been a period of weariness, misfortune, and 
misery. Now they had come to the Jordan, and 
once the river was crossed, they would all say good¬ 
bye to the old life, and greet the new. Strangely 
conflicting must have been their emotions as they 
stood on the border of the unknown. Joshua, their 
leader, issued minute instructions to the host. In 
order to secure their careful attention to his com¬ 
mands, he added these suggestive words: “ Ye have 
not passed this way heretofore.” What he meant 
was: “ This is a new experience for you: there has 
been no opportunity of rehearsing for it; it is the 
first thing of its kind that has come into your his¬ 
tory ; ye have not passed this way heretofore, there¬ 
fore sanctify yourselves, in view of the unknown 
future.” 

Now from this incident in Israel’s history, there 
is a principle springs to light which may fairly be 
termed The Fascination of the Unknown. It is a 


11 


12 FASCINATION OF THE UNKNOWN 


very powerful principle, and is always identified 
with the romantic side of life. Sometimes we are 
told that romance has disappeared from life, but 
this is not so. Romance lurks around every corner, 
peeps at us from prosaic places, and rushes into 
prominence at the most unlikely moments. It was 
this consideration which led George Eliot to say 
most truly, that “ any intelligent calculation of the 
expected, must include a large allowance of the 
unexpected What she evidently means is that one 
can never tell what emergencies may arise at any 
moment, and because of this life’s operations need 
to be conducted on a wide margin. It is in the 
margins of common life as with money on a jour¬ 
ney—to have enough, one must always have a little 
too much. These margins make room for ro¬ 
mance, adventure, possibility, for as life unfolds to 
us all it is full of fascination; we “ have not passed 
this way heretofore.” 

LOVE OE ADVENTURE 

The Fascination of the Unknown makes a fitting 
appeal to our love of adventure in common life. 
This love of adventure is—within limits—per¬ 
fectly legitimate. Man is the eternal seeker: the 
fascination of the Unknown lures him on. Indeed 
the dullest life has each day a new possibility. 
This is what constitutes the real fascination of 
living. 

The late Professor William James, a few days 


FASCINATION OF THE UNKNOWN 13 


before his death, wrote one of his most charming 
essays on “ what makes life worth while.” His 
thesis was that life is made worth while by the new 
challenges to adventure that come with each day, 
challenges that call forth the best that is in us. 
Each day we must look for new combinations of 
circumstances, which only a living spirit can bring 
into being, and we must feel the fascination that 
arises from the fact that we “ have not passed this 
way heretofore.” Every life holds unsuspected 
stores of adventure. At first we thought it was 
only a field where mushrooms and blackberries 
might be gathered, though indeed both tasks are in 
their way delightful at a certain stage of being. 
But as the lamp of experience soon reveals, the 
field of life is full of gold, and silver, and precious 
stones, so that no matter how modest our circum¬ 
stances, all life is enhanced and ennobled by the 
possibility of association with Christ. Christ can 
enrich the soul by the pearl of great price. So that 
Dr. Harry E. Fosdick is right when he says that 
“ the most neglected real estate in the world is the 
ground on which we stand to-day, and at this 
moment.” 

There is an old proverb which reminds us that 
“ Adventures meet the adventurous.” One of the 
most singular illustrations of the proverb is fur¬ 
nished by the discovery of glass. How did we get 
glass which has played such a part in civilization? 
Why, we owe its discovery to the blunders of ad- 


14 FASCINATION OF THE UNKNOWN 


venturous Phoenician sailors, who long ago found 
themselves stranded on the north coast of Africa 
in the middle of a sandy desert. They went out to 
search for stones on which to place their kettles 
and pans while cooking, but on finding none, they 
thought of the lumps of saltpetre which had formed 
part of their cargo. These they brought along, 
made a fire on them, and cooked their simple meal. 
The heat melted the saltpetre, which mixed freely 
with the ashes and the glowing sand, and as the 
liquid mass cooled, it became before their eyes a 
hard transparent substance. The result was the 
discovery of glass! It is true such a thing hap¬ 
pens only once perhaps in a million years, and 
yet what seemed accidental was not entirely so. 
There was the love of adventure on the part of 
these sailors; the fascination of making the best 
of their circumstances in an unknown territory, 
and as ever “ fortune favours the brave.” It was 
the lion-hearted General Gordon who once said 
that “ Great Britain was made, not so much by her 
statesmen as by her adventurers,” and the words 
were true. 

There is a wonderful appeal made to us in every 
story of adventure. I suppose it is the old mi¬ 
gratory instinct, which still lingers in us, that stirs 
us with strange thrills of enthusiasm as we read 
the story of some famous traveller in unknown 
lands. There is an explorer latent in every man 
whose mind is large enough to have interests out- 


FASCINATION OF THE UNKNOWN 15 


side himself. It is this element of adventure in us 
all which attracts us to a great explorer like Sir 
Walter Raleigh, who has been called “ The Shep¬ 
herd of Ocean.” One of the finest pictures Millais 
ever painted is entitled “ The Boyhood of Sir 
Walter Raleigh,” but I have frequently thought it 
might have been most fittingly given as a sub-title: 
“ The Fascination of the Unknown.” The picture 
shows a bluff and hearty old sailor recounting his 
travels and exploits in the West to two boys, one of 
whom is the youthful Raleigh, whose heart leaps 
within him, and whose fancy conjures up a glow¬ 
ing picture of adventure. As the old sailor talks, 
young Raleigh hears the call of the unknown, and 
at once the little old-fashioned toy, which up to that 
moment had constituted his world, is thrown aside 
into a corner of the room, and ever afterwards 
neglected. In one brief hour he has grown from 
childhood to youth, and must needs follow the 
gleam. So the call comes to you and to me to fol¬ 
low the spiritual quest; to follow the gleam of God 
in the coming year, for we “ have not passed this 
way heretofore.” It may be a passage of Scrip¬ 
ture, like our text, or it may be a sudden vision of 
truth, or it may be the touch of a golden sunset, but 
it becomes the occasion of the sunrise of the soul. 
At once, those who hear the Voice, those who see 
the Glory, those who feel the fascination of the 
Unknown, go forth on the quest of a fuller and a 
richer life. Make the life of the common day, 


16 FASCINATION OF THE UNKNOWN 

a challenge, not a compromise; an adventure for 
God, not a mere animal existence; this will trans¬ 
form the commonplace, and give dignity to the 
lowliest duty. 

THE MODERATION OE ADVENTURE 

The Fascination of the Unknown needs to he 
met and mastered , by the presence of a living faith 
in God. Such a faith will moderate adventure, or 
at least direct it into worthy channels. Norman 
Duncan, in his beautiful volume, entitled “ Dr. 
Grenfell’s Parish,” tells of meeting an old New¬ 
foundlander, who had fished from one harbour for 
sixty years. He computed that he had put out to 
sea at least twenty thousand times; that he had 
many times been swept out to sea with the icepacks; 
that he had frequently been frozen to the seat of 
his punt; that he had weathered hundreds of 
gales, and been wrecked more times than he could 
remember: yet the fascination of the Unknown 
as far as the sea was concerned, appealed to him 
in his old age, as strong as it did in youth, and 
he wished he could live his life again, only with 
a deepened sense of the presence of God, by a 
growing faith. 

Our position today calls for faith. As we 
pass the New Year we resemble the people of Is¬ 
rael in the days of Joshua. We are like travellers 
about to start on another stage of the journey. At 
such a moment the fascination of the Unknown 


FASCINATION OF THE UNKNOWN 17 


makes its appeal to us all, and we need to meet 
and master this fascination by the pressure of 
faith in the Eternal God, whose years do not 
change. 

Of course in one sense there is no New Year. 
One day succeeds the other, and there is nothing to 
mark one day off from the others. But all the 
same, in an important sense, there is a New Year. 
January first may be the counterpart of December 
thirty-first in that the flush of dawn, and shadows 
of evening have brightened and darkened on the 
two days, at almost the same interval. Yet in the 
night between a shadowy line was passed, and with 
the light of the morning, a new year dawns upon 
the world. 

January first is different from December thirty- 
first. On the latter we wrote “ The year of our 
Lord, 1922 ”; the next day we write: “ The year of 
our Lord, 1923.” We take a step onward, so that 
it may be truthfully said of each of lis: “ Ye have 
not passed this way heretofore.” 

The great question is, How can we best face the 
Unknown future? It was said by a Cabinet Min¬ 
ister, recently, that at the end of seventy years, the 
two outstanding days in his life were his wedding 
day, and the first day he spent in the city of Athens. 
All of this may be true, but what if each one of us 
should say to the New Year: “ Welcome, New 
Year, which by God’s help I purpose making the 
best year of my life! 


18 FASCINATION OF THE UNKNOWN 

WHERE DO YOU PUT CHRIST ? 

The carpenter’s shop offered our Lord a career 
that was worthy, worthy of the Son of God. This 
was because He put the will of God before every¬ 
thing else. The question that determines the tex¬ 
ture of the New Year is : “ Where shall I put 
Christ?” A tourist on the Continent of Europe 
tells of a visit paid to one of the great Cathedrals. 
The building was marvellous in its magnificence. 
He observed several beautiful carved images, 
amongst them being the twelve apostles, the Virgin 
Mother, and some of the ancient saints. But away 
in a remote corner he discovered an insignificant 
image of Christ: it stood alone, and unnoticed in 
the dark. The dazzling light which filled the build¬ 
ing brought out prominently the beautiful propor¬ 
tions of the other figures, but did not send its 
beams to the Christ. It was in the shadow of the 
back-ground. 

The question, therefore, that pierces to the core 
of every life is: “ Where do you put Christ? ” His 
Kingdom is the one thing that counts. The noble 
words of David Livingstone, who was a truly ad¬ 
venturous soul, may well prove worthy of a niche 
in your New Year’s resolve : “ I will place no value 
on anything I have or may possess, except in its 
relation to the Kingdom of Christ. If anything I 
have will advance the interests of that Kingdom, it 
shall be given up or kept, as by keeping or giving 
up I shall most promote the glory of Him to whom 


FASCINATION OF THE UNKNOWN 19 


I owe all my hopes for time and Eternity. May 
grace be given me to adhere to this.” Such a re¬ 
solve means the presence of a living faith in God, 
through Christ, who calls us to be His followers 
amid the attractions that appeal to our senses from 
day to day. 

Another great Scotchman—Lord Shaw, of Dun¬ 
fermline—made by faith the motto of his life: 
“ Turn every trouble into an adventure.” It was 
his talisman to success through his entire career, as 
the Lord Advocate of Scotland. 

WIDER INTEREST IN LIFE 

The Fascination of the Unknown gives a wide¬ 
spread interest in life, and supplies ample oppor¬ 
tunity to find the way of helpful service. The late 
Bishop of Lincoln—Bishop Wordsworth—was an 
example unto many in this respect. Of every new 
opening, and new interest he heard the words: “ Ye 
have not passed this way heretofore.” On one 
occasion a visitor called at the palace, and ventur¬ 
ing to talk to the Bishop’s wife about some little 
hobby of his own, inquired if the Bishop was at all 
interested in such trifles. Her instant reply was: 
“ The Bishop is interested in everything.” How 
much brighter life would be for us all, if the fasci¬ 
nation did not fade away from the common things 
we touch and handle. There is a world of truth, 
and a wealth of philosophy in the lines of Robert 
Louis Stevenson: “ The world is so full of a num- 


20 FASCINATION OF THE UNKNOWN 


ber of things, I am sure we ought all to be happy 
as Kings.” 

I do not know when I have been more deeply 
moved by the daily press of this country, than when 
an extract was given the other day from the will of 
a woman who had just died in England. Here is 
the extract: “ The sea has always been a friend of 
mine. If the two boat-men whom I have so often 
employed are still alive, I would like them to take 
my body in one of their boats, early in the morn¬ 
ing, when no one is about, and no other boats are 
in the bay, and bury me off Blackhead, in the deep 
sea.” The sea with its mystery, and ever changing 
moods, she wished to be her final earthly home. 
Why ? She does not answer our question, but pos¬ 
sibly her husband, or her sons, found a similar 
resting place there during the World War. Or 
possibly the echo of ancient tides surged through 
her soul, as part of the rhythm of life. The place 
where she desired to be buried is a place where the 
waters are never calm: outside Blackhead the waves 
from the great Atlantic, tumble and plunge through 
the North Sound, into Galway Bay, where they 
strike on the mighty rocks which guard the West 
coast of Ireland, and prevent the Atlantic from 
sweeping over the country. Perhaps this woman, 
so lonely in life, will find friendship and solace 
there, where many a mariner has gone down, and 
where the treasures of the great Spanish Armada 
garnish the floor of the ocean. At any rate, the 


FASCINATION OF THE UNKNOWN 21 

request in her will, reveals one to whom the fasci¬ 
nation of the Unknown was a reality, and it wid¬ 
ened her interest beyond the span of mortal life. 
To many the voice of the Ocean is the Voice of 
God in the soul. In this connection it is not with¬ 
out interest that the word “ Soul ” is akin to the 
word Sea : that in the days when Greece was 
young, both words had the same ancestor. Dr. 
Frank Crane is right when he says that “ There is 
nothing in nature looks so much like a soul as the 
Ocean.” Every one who dwells on it must feel 
how true this is. The waters stretch away to the 
distant horizon, and “ marry the sky, behind a 
bridal veil of mist. Here you find Infinity—you 
feel it. Here is the velvet touch of mystery. Here 
is the same heaving inquietude I find within me.” 
And it may be added here is the same fascination 
of the unknown, that confronts you in every human 
soul; a fascination which makes the study of human 
nature, the most interesting study in the world. 

possibilities oe the unknown 

Life’s greatness begins for us all when we realize 
the possibilities of the soul. It has been said of 
Columbus that the instinct of an unknown conti¬ 
nent burned within him. That is true of each one 
of us, for man as we have seen is the eternal seeker. 
The fascination of the unknown lures him on in a 
perpetual search. There is nothing so delightful 
to young people as a secret, except, perhaps, the 


22 FASCINATION OF THE UNKNOWN 

joy of finding it out. The possibilities of the un¬ 
known are therefore possibilities of soul power. 
Well might Lucy Larcom sing: 

“ I said it on the mountain path, 

I said it on the mountain stairs— 

The best things any mortal hath 

Are those which every mortal shares. 

“ The air we breathe, the sky, the breeze, 

The light without us, and within— 

Life with its unlocked treasuries, 

God’s riches, are for all to win.” 

This view of life looks for adventure, as a means 
to a higher end. The late Jacob Riis, on one oc¬ 
casion when he was congratulated on his wide¬ 
spread, and successful interest in life, said: “ Well, 
I put myself in the way of things happening; that’s 
all.” It sounds very simple, but is it as simple as it 
looks ? That depends. The man who goes through 
life self-absorbed, sees no vision. But the man who 
takes the way of Christ, the way of the Cross, the 
way of high adventure with His Lord, for such a 
man the future never loses its fascination, and ap¬ 
peal. The unexplored makes life worth living. On 
an old map of Africa, the names of the places that 
had been opened up could be seen; but over the cen¬ 
tral parts of the Continent, the word “ unexplored ” 
was inscribed. So across the face of the Continent 
of 1923 , the word “ unexplored ” is written. There 
may be meadows of prosperity, or deserts of ad¬ 
versity, or rivers of pleasure, or mountains of vis¬ 
ion : we do not know. “ Ye have not passed this 


FASCINATION OF THE UNKNOWN 23 


way heretofore.” The book of the year is still 
sealed with seven seals, and they are not all broken 
at the same time. 

THE WONDERFUL YEAR 

It was the poet Dryden—whose chief character¬ 
istic was intensity—who called the year 1666 
Annus Mirabilis; the wonderful year, because in it 
occurred two events that had a decisive influence 
on the life of England. One was the great fire of 
London, which at first assumed the aspect of a 
national disaster; but which in the final event 
proved to be an immense blessing, inasmuch as it 
destroyed the breeding ground of the Great Plague, 
and compelled the people of London to rebuild their 
houses in better fashion. The other was the re¬ 
pulse of the Dutch, which opened for England a 
doorway into the Orient. But it is quite within 
the bounds of possibility that the doings of that 
Annus Mirabilis may shrivel into insignificance 
when compared with the doings of 1923. America 
is returning to her proper place of influence among 
the nations. Europe at long last is facing reality 
in the question of reparations, and settlements. 
India is coming of age, and will have on hand her 
own problems raised by a wider measure of self- 
government. Ireland’s star of hope is slowly 
climbing the horizon, and any day may appear in 
splendour. As for Turkey, the European nations 
have ventured on a great experiment in permitting 


24 FASCINATION OF THE UNKNOWN 

her a new lease of life, in the government of Chris¬ 
tian races. In view of these typical national ad¬ 
ventures, life promises to be unusually intense. 

We have all a great capacity for forgetting, es¬ 
pecially our benefits. It is fitting on this day that 
we should build the memory of our mercies into a 
memorial, as Joshua did with the stones from the 
bed of the Jordan, and leave them on the river’s 
bank as a witness to God’s faithfulness and good¬ 
ness. Even if the past year has brought to us loss 
and suffering, yet out of the loss we may take the 
gain, and press forward. A soldier who had 
fought in the Civil War subsequently became stone 
blind, but very happy, and always proudly wore his 
medals on his breast. Somebody ventured to ask 
him: “ What do you do in these days of dark¬ 
ness ? ” “ Do,” he replied, almost scornfully: 

“ Why I thank God that for fifty years I had the 
gift of sight, and that I saw Abraham Lincoln, and 
heard the bugles call for the victory of truth and 
righteousness.” Noble soul! So to remember that 
we have been privileged to hear the bugles call for 
service, and in some measure to respond, should 
bring comfort in the darkest hour of life. 

HOMELAND OE SOUL 

In view of the unknown future, perhaps I am 
writing for some who fear that they may miss the 
path of service, and the true Homeland of the Soul. 
Depend upon it, you will not lose it if only you keep 


FASCINATION OF THE UNKNOWN 25 


Christ in view. In one of Plato’s dialogues, there 
is a beautiful passage, on which it does one good to 
dwell in these days. Some one had been asking 
Socrates how one in this world could get guidance 
in the large and deep sense; guidance in the great 
business of living. Socrates with perfect candor, 
and yet with a strain of sadness, replied, that just 
as one going on a voyage would naturally consult 
those who had gone before him, and pay heed to 
their remarks, so should we face the unknown 
future with the best wisdom we can secure; but 
that “ every man on the voyage takes a risk unless 
there be somewhere, some sure word from God, on 
which as a safe barque, one can make the passage 
with security.” It was a wise forecast by the old 
sage: “ some sure word from God.” Such a word 
is much needed by us all. 

Let me, in closing, present this sure word by 
means of an incident, which is a parable of life. 
Some years ago a party of travellers on a New 
Year’s Day were for the first time passing over one 
of the Swiss Alps. After they had gone a consider¬ 
able distance, it began to snow heavily, when the 
oldest of the guides was noticed to shake his head 
gravely, and to remark: “ If the wind rises, we are 
all lost.” Scarcely had he spoken when a gale 
arose, the snow was whirled in drifts, so that all 
the way-marks were obliterated. At length, one of 
the guides who had gone a little in advance was 
heard shouting: “ The Cross! The Cross! We 


26 FASCINATION OF THE UNKNOWN 


are all right.” What had the Cross to do with it? 
It was one of those religious memorials set up by 
some private individual for a personal reason, 
which had at length become a well-known landmark 
for the travellers; hence the moment the guide saw 
it, he knew his bearings, and what direction to take. 
To take the way of the Cross, was to follow the 
path of helpful and highest service for all the 
company. 

What was true of that symbol in the case of 
these travellers, is true in all instances of the thing 
which it signifies. Although we have not travelled 
the path heretofore, Christ and His Cross are the 
true word of God to one and all, and the way of 
best service to humanity. To everyone who is in 
danger of wandering into some forbidden way, 
through the fascinations of sin, Christ’s voice is 
heard above all the voices of earth: “ I am the 
Light of the world; he that followeth Me shall not 
walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” 

Not only do we hear Christ’s voice: He also 
offers us His hand, so that if we stumble He will 
hold us fast. On another occasion in Switzerland, 
a tourist climbing a high mountain drew back in 
fear at a dangerous corner, when the guide put out 
his hand, saying, “ Take hold of that; that hand 
never lost a man.” So Christ’s hand will hold us 
up and strengthen us, as we travel through the 
Unknown Year, and will steady us in the last and 
greatest adventure of all. 


II 


THE ROMANCE OF RELIGION 

“ Whosoever shall compel thee to go with him a mile, 
go with him twain” —Matthew v:4i. 

W E have here the romance of religion as 
understood by Jesus. The passage has 
frequently perplexed many good people, 
but once we get the Master’s viewpoint, these per¬ 
plexities pass away. Failing to get His viewpoint 
we are usually as much puzzled as the Sunday 
School teacher who gave this text to her class of 
small boys to memorize for the following Sabbath. 
To her astonishment, and amusement, one boy 
when his turn came, said: “ Whosoever shall com¬ 
pel thee to go with him a mile, go with him by 
train /’ At any rate that boy had read into the text 
a meaning of his own, not without sense, and to 
him a touch of romance, which is more perhaps 
than some of us have tried to do. 

Let us look at the circumstances from this point 
of view. Life was rather dull and drab in our 
Lord’s day: the spectacular opportunities for cour¬ 
age were few and far between. But the common¬ 
place opportunities lasted all the day, and every day 
of the week. One of these commonplace occur¬ 
rences was temporary impressment for service. If 


27 


28 


THE ROMANCE OF RELIGION 


a Roman official were lost in the woods, and met a 
Jew he could compel him to go with him a mile as 
his guide. If one were carrying a burden along the 
way, and it got too heavy, under this law of the 
Roman Empire, if he met another he could oblige 
him to accompany him a mile, if necessary. This 
was especially true where the Governor of a Dis¬ 
trict, or his representative, desired to requisition 
certain services for the State, such as the taking a 
message for a mile: he could commandeer the first 
man he met. It was sometimes a rather disagree¬ 
able duty, but it had to be done. 

THE EOVE mieE 

Our Lord here refers to this custom, but he en¬ 
larges its outlook, and gives to it a moral and spir¬ 
itual application, shot through with the spirit of 
romance. The law said: “You must go a mile, 
which is your duty,” but Jesus said: “ Go with him 
twain,” which means “ do more than your duty.” 
The first mile is compulsory—that is, what you 
ought: the second mile is voluntary, that is, what 
you may. To stop at the first mile often makes a 
man a literalist—like the Pharisees of Christ’s day; 
but to gladly travel the second mile makes a man a 
Christian, of the romantic type. The second mile is 
the love-mile, and the path of the love-mile to the 
real follower of the Master, has a fascination that 
is all its own. 

The subject arising from our Lord’s words is 


THE ROMANCE OF RELIGION 


29 


therefore the Romance of Religion, and George 
Meredith was right when he said that we lose the 
sky for a ceiling if we allow romance to die out of 
life. There is perhaps no word in the language 
used with such a vague idea as to its real meaning 
than this word romance. It is supposed to be the 
sworn enemy of punctuality, solvency, and the laws 
of arithmetic, which have real foundations in fact. 
Romance is the wild and the doubtful: Reality the 
tame and the safe. Romance is the open country, 
while Reality is the crowded city; and the human 
mind oscillates between these two poles of thought. 
It is too large a question to discuss in detail at 
present, but for our immediate purpose, I want to 
take Romance, as the full flower of life. This sig¬ 
nifies the joy of freedom, inner freedom, and the 
glow of service that does not cease when the letter 
of the law has been fulfilled. There is a distinction 
and an honour, that go further than the first mile, 
and by doing it in the Master’s spirit the courage 
of the commonplace is seen to be greater than the 
courage of the crisis. To go through the common¬ 
place with a cheerful heart, a ready mind, a loving 
surrender, is the romance of religion Jesus had in 
view, and the great need of the world in our day. 
A young miner was asked, the other day: “ Why 
did you go on strike last Spring? ” His reply was: 
“ Because life was so dreadfully dull. , ’ That is 
what many still find, hence the need of a religion 
with a dash of romance in its content, and the 


30 


THE ROMANCE OF RELIGION 


religion of Jesus supplies this need. He has 
summed it up in this great, and beautiful, and far- 
reaching principle to guide the lives and the con¬ 
duct of His followers: “ Whosoever shall compel 
thee to go with him a mile, go with him twain.” 

secret oe highest eiee 

The Romance of the Second Mile lifts the duties 
of religion into the atmosphere of the Divine Love. 
We are all familiar with the first mile, the regula¬ 
tion mile, the mile in which we have no choice, but 
the beauty and joy of life consists in having the 
disposition and temper which goes beyond what is 
compulsory, to what is voluntary. According to 
our Lord, this is the righteousness which exceeds 
that of the Scribes and Pharisees, without which 
we cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. 
Some of you may think that this is a hard saying, 
and I admit at the first blush it looks so, but it is 
the secret of the highest life. If you are com¬ 
pelled to go one mile, then of your own free will go 
another, and you will defeat the malice of the neces¬ 
sity, by the romance of going one better. 

Most of us make an effort to travel the first mile, 
with more or less success. There are certain laws 
we all must keep unless we wish to find ourselves 
in prison. Custom imposes on us all certain un¬ 
written laws, which we transgress at our peril. 
But these things belong to the first mile: to the 
letter rather than the spirit. The second mile is the 


THE ROMANCE OF RELIGION 


81 


mile not of custom, but of romance: it is joyous, 
because voluntary, and thus surpasses all mercenary 
motives. The romance of the second mile lifts the 
duties of life into a higher atmosphere, and makes 
us willing to go beyond the strict requirements of 
the case. Indeed, all the beauty and grace of life 
are found in travelling the second mile. 

better than necessary 

The value of the second mile is great when con¬ 
sidered from this point of view. Emergencies are 
happening to us all, however hum-drum our lives 
may be. We leave our homes in the morning, not 
expecting any demands to be made on our time, or 
any interference with the day’s engagements, when 
suddenly we are compelled to go off in a direction 
we never contemplated. We all know what this 
means: we are compelled to go one mile, and at the 
end of this mile the question arises: “ What are 
you going to do further?” The next mile is the 
real test: if we can only bring into it the romance, 
the spirit, the mind of our Master then we travel it 
not with feet laden with leaden shoes, but with an 
elasticity of tread that springs from a loving heart. 

This is the great principle of useful service, and 
also of real success in life. There is an old business 
firm which has for its motto: “ A little better than 
is necessary.” That is the secret of success. The 
lives that are useful serve with a will: they do their 
duty, and a little more. The late Mr. Andrew Car- 


32 


THE ROMANCE OF RELIGION 


negie, in an address before a graduating class in 
New York, gave some good advice to the young on 
how to gain success in life. He said: “ There are 
several classes of young men. There are those that 
do not do all their duty; there are those also who 
profess to do their duty; and there is a third class, 
far better than the other two; those that do their 
duty, and a little more. You young lads have 
begun well. Keep on. Don’t bother about the 
future. Do your duty, and a little more, and the 
future will take care of itself.” 

This principle is true in all departments of life. 
Life is only of value when there is a margin over 
and above what is necessary. Take the position of 
a minister. If a minister calculates to a nicety how 
much he should do in order to secure the favour of 
his people, and so earn the salary that is paid him, 
then all the romance of service is gone, and his in¬ 
fluence for good will soon follow. The minister, 
and his office bearers, are all called to do the “ little 
more ” than is necessary: this is what is meant by 
the romance of religion; and this alone will bring 
in the Kingdom of God, and so lift life into the 
atmosphere of the Divine Love. 

A N£W STANDARD 

The Romance of the Second Mile transforms the 
burdens of the average man into blessings, that 
enrich the character and life. We sometimes hear 
a man say: “ I’m no saint, but I’m as good as the 
average man.” This is said, I suppose, to appease 


THE ROMANCE OF RELIGION 


33 


the conscience of the speaker, or to justify a certain 
line of conduct in the eyes of others, but it always 
makes me feel uncomfortable. On the lips of the 
man who says it, the words may be true, but is it 
really worth saying? I question if it is. If your 
health is no better than that of the average man, it 
is not much to boast of, for most persons have ail¬ 
ments or physical defects, of one sort or another. 
If you are no more prosperous than the average 
man, you are certainly not too well off. The sta¬ 
tistics tell us that a large percentage of the men who 
go into business for themselves are far from suc¬ 
cessful. The average man today is likely to be hard 
up: he is more than ready for his wages the 
moment they are due, and it is well if he can make 
both ends meet. Nor is the average man’s intelli¬ 
gence very extensive, or at least accurate. The 
standard of the average man ought not to be our 
standard. We should be ambitious to raise the 
general level of mankind. 

Now Christ has introduced into this world a new 
standard which ought to shame the man who runs 
to cover with the plea: “ I’m as good as the av¬ 
erage man.” Christ’s standard says: “ Don’t be 
satisfied with the average, go two miles with the 
man who needs you rather than one, and by doing 
so you will soon transform the burdens of your life 
into blessings.” 

Let us test this principle in the light of our 
Lord’s words. Picture a Jewish peasant in Christ’s 
day saving his little crop, in a patch of ground near 


84 


THE ROMANCE OF RELIGION 


which our Lord is passing with His disciples. A 
Roman soldier comes along, and says: “ See here, 
my man; carry this burden for me.” At once all 
the hate possible to a Jew in the presence of Gentile 
domination rises in him, and every step of his 
journey is servile slavery, for the burden carries 
with it the whole incubus of the Roman rule. He 
marches along the weary mile, in front of his mas¬ 
ter of sullen mien, all the while writhing inwardly 
with futile vengeful feelings, and mutters to him¬ 
self what his people will do one day when power 
comes their way. 

Now picture another peasant, later on in the day 
who has the Kingdom of Heaven within his heart, 
and who desires to be kind to even the evil and un¬ 
thankful. He takes up his burden pleasantly, re¬ 
solved to overstep his task, and to kill his enemy 
with kindness. The romance of Christ’s religion 
is to him a blessed reality, with the result that he 
goes not merely the legal limit, but the second mile. 
The motive makes it a pleasant variation from his 
own toil, and the result is that his burden is trans¬ 
formed into a blessing that enriches his character 
for ever. In addition, he puts such magnanimity 
into his task that the other man is also influenced 
for good. 


ATTITUDE TO UlEE 

It was the first mile people that crucified our 
Lord, because He told them it was not sufficient. 


THE ROMANCE OF RELIGION 


35 


He showed them that they could go the first mile, 
and remain mean, and base, and selfish. So it 
finally came to the point where those who first 
heard our Lord must crucify themselves or Christ. 
They found it easier to crucify Him, which they 
did. One of the first mile folk was Judas: another 
was the rich young ruler. On the other hand, a 
life like that of St. Paul shows us one who went 
the second mile, and one whose burdens were trans¬ 
formed into transcendent blessings: he, at length, 
even gloried in the burdens and infirmities of life, 
so that in him the power of Redeeming Love 
should be made manifest. 

It is here we reach the crux of the whole subject, 
and must determine what our attitude towards life 
ought to be. There are many illustrations of men 
in all departments of life whose burdens have be¬ 
come blessings by. falling in line with Christ’s doc¬ 
trine in this passage—the doctrine of the little 
extra. Some years ago, in an English town, a 
youth had a subordinate position in a law office. 
The office was situated within sight of the railway 
station, and the heads of the firm frequently called 
on certain of their clerks to go long railway jour¬ 
neys, on short notice. This particular youth ob¬ 
served that no one was quite ready to rush off on a 
moment’s notice, so he determined that if his 
chance ever came, he would be ready. He brought 
down to the office, next day, a small bag containing 
a few things that he would need if called upon, and 


36 THE ROMANCE OF RELIGION 

kept it under his desk in readiness for the oppor¬ 
tunity. At last his chance came. One day the 
chief of his department said to him: “ Do you 
think you can catch the train now coming into the 
station? If so, go, and we’ll telegraph instructions 
to } r ou at the next stopping place.” So at once this 
youth went off, did his piece of work in a satis¬ 
factory way, and finally as Mr. Reader Harris: 
K. C. took a high place in the councils of the Brit¬ 
ish Empire. It was the romance of the second mile 
that first started him in the right direction, on his 
career as a great and useful lawyer in his day. 

The same principle is true in the realm of medi¬ 
cine and surgery. Some years ago, there died in 
the city of New York an eminent surgeon—the late 
Dr. Robert Dawburn—who guided his life work 
on similar lines. In sewing up a wound, after an 
operation, one of his students observed that he 
always tied three knots, where the regulation cus¬ 
tom was to tie only two. Asked about it one day, 
Dr. Dawburn replied: “ The third is my sleeping 
knot; it may not be necessary to tie it, but it makes 
the matter much safer, and I find I sleep better for 
it.” That is only another instance of the principle 
of our Lord, and of doing a little more than could 
be properly demanded. 

REALM OF RELIGION 

But it is in the realm of religion that we see the 
highest illustration of this principle. By religion. 


THE ROMANCE OF RELIGION 


37 


we mean that power which makes a man choose 
what is lofty and noble, rather than what is mean 
and selfish: that puts courage into timorous hearts, 
and gladness into clouded spirits: that consoles men 
in grief, and enables them to bear heavy burdens. 
What power can do all this? It is the romance of 
religion learned from our royal Master, that gives 
us this power; the power that uplifts men out of 
the domination of the material, and sets their feet 
firm in the things that are spiritual; the pathway 
of the second mile. 

It was the late Rupert Brooke—romantic soul 
that he was, who thanked God in the early days of 
the war, for “ matching the men with the hour.” 
But the truth is, God has always men who are equal 
to the hour, and they are the men from whom we 
learn most concerning the religion of the second 
mile. Such a man was James Chalmers, the great 
missionary of the South Sea Islands. His life was 
an average life at the start, and frequently the 
duties of the day pressed heavily upon him. Yet 
in recalling, at the end of twenty-one years of toil, 
his experiences on the foreign field what did he 
say? He said: “ Give me back all the experience 
of the past twenty-one years, its shipwrecks, its 
savages, with spears and clubs—give it all back, 
with all its burdens, and I will still be your mission¬ 
ary.” The romance of the second mile had turned 
for him all his burdens into blessings, as it will 
also do for you and me. Going a little further 


38 


THE ROMANCE OF RELIGION 


than you need in the right direction—that is the 
secret of all real and spiritual progress. 

The poets have not failed to recognize this great 
principle, and to set it forth in language we cannot 
misunderstand. Long ago, Shakespeare made Iago 
say of Desdemona: “ She holds it a vice in her 
goodness, not to do more, than required.” Was 
our Shakespeare a partizan, or a seer, when he 
wrote in that strain ? Undoubtedly he was a seer, 
one who had the seeing eye, and seeing soul, and 
whose line is quite in keeping with the teachings of 
our Divine Lord. Another poet of modern times 
recognizes the same truth, the same romance of the 
second mile, in a poem of which I quote two verses. 
He writes: 

Stern duty said, “ go walk a mile 
And help thy brother bear his load.” 

I walked reluctantly, meanwhile 

My heart grew soft, by help bestowed. 

The Christ said: “ Go another mile.” 

I went, and duty spake no more, 

For Love arose, and with a smile 
Took all the burdens that I bore. 

METHOD OE JESUS 

The Romance of the Second Mile is the method 
and spirit of Jesus applied to the courtesies and 
conduct of our modern life. Of course, there are 
some foolish people who are always assuring us 
that the age of romance is dead, but this is not so. 
As a matter of fact there is more of romance in the 


THE ROMANCE OF RELIGION 


39 


world today than at any previous time, but what is 
needed at the moment to allow romance to open 
our eyes to the glamour and the glory of common 
service. 

Take, for example, hospitality. In consequence 
of compulsion we often do things that have the 
look of hospitality, but there is something lacking, 
inasmuch as we only do what decency makes it im¬ 
possible to avoid. That is not courtesy; that is not 
real hospitality. Real hospitality has a touch of 
romance in its flavour, and is not in bondage to the 
mere conventions of life. 

This compulsion of decency affects not only our 
hospitality, but also our beneficence. Some good 
cause needs friends, and the friends of the cause 
are subscribing; but when the turn of many good 
people comes, they say: “ Let me see the list,” and, 
having glanced at the list, they dispense their gifts 
on a basis, not how much they can give, but how 
little, in view of what those on the list have done. 
There was once a minister called on the great and 
good William Wilberforce soliciting a contribu¬ 
tion towards a piece of work he had in hand. He 
was asked to wait over for the night, and told that 
his application would be attended to next morning. 
When he came down to breakfast, it was only too 
evident that serious news had reached his host by 
the morning mail. Wilberforce said to him: “ My 
friend, I have what is considered bad news. I find 
that I am some thousands of pounds poorer than I 


40 


THE ROMANCE OF RELIGION 


believed myself to be yesterday evening. This has 
taught me a useful lesson as to the instability of 
riches, and the necessity of making good use of 
them while they remain with us. I meant yester¬ 
day to have given you twenty-five pounds, but per¬ 
mit me now to hand you this cheque for fifty for 
your good work.” That was the romance of the 
second mile; that was true service because volun¬ 
tary; that was the road of the loving heart, and 
love is ever its own reward. 

The follower of Jesus does not guide his life by 
law but by love, and therefore it is both beautiful 
and free. Love is a constant travelling of the 
second mile. On the last occasion I visited Scot¬ 
land, one of the most hallowing memories I treas¬ 
ure was that of a pilgrimage to the grave of the 
late Professor Henry Drummond. It was a simple 
grave, beneath the shadow of old Stirling Castle, 
and looking out on the far-famed field of Ban¬ 
nockburn, but to me the heritage of Drummond’s 
life and labours had an interest that nothing else 
could share. His religion was at all times the 
religion of the second mile: it was the method and 
spirit of Jesus, applied to our complex modern life. 
In his own words, the romance of life to Drum¬ 
mond was “ to move among people on the common 
street; to live among them not as a monk, but as a 
brother man with brother men; to serve God, not 
with form or ritual, but in the free impulse of the 
soul; to bear the burden of society, and relieve its 


THE ROMANCE OF RELIGION 


41 


needs; to carry on the multitudinous activities of the 
city, whether social, commercial, or philanthropic, 
in Christ's spirit, and for Christ’s ends; “ this is the 
religion of the Son of Man, and the only meetness 
for Heaven, which has much reality in it.” 

The method and spirit of Jesus have also found 
illustration in the life of Mr. Arthur Nash, of 
Cincinnati, in his big business, all built upon the 
principles of the Golden Rule. Mr. Nash is one of 
the best modern examples of the romance of relig¬ 
ion, which with him means high adventure with 
Christ. His religion also is the religion of the 
second mile, and it is to me a rare honour to be able 
to call him my friend. Arthur Nash is not only a 
pioneer in modem industrial relations: he is the 
greatest pioneer and pathfinder amongst a rapidly 
increasing band of men, who are making the law 
of life our Lord’s words: “ All things whatsoever 
ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so 
to them.” He has put that law of Christ definitely 
and completely into operation in his business, and 
as one who has had the privilege of going through 
his entire plant, and studying the man and his work 
at close range, I gladly bear my testimony to the 
success of his venture, the adventure of a man who 
has dared to walk the second mile with Christ. 

supreme: example 

The Cross of Christ is the supreme example of 
how God Himself travels the second mile. That 


42 


THE ROMANCE OF RELIGION 


Cross is not as the schoolmen used to think—just 
the exact and carefully measured equivalent for 
man’s guilt; the agony and the shedding of blood 
being precisely proportioned to the sin, and the 
number of sinners to be saved. We have moved 
away from these mediaeval positions, and can never 
return to them again. The Cross of Christ is 
rather the high adventure of God; the offering of 
God’s all for the salvation of a race He loved amid 
its ruin by sin. “ God so loved the world that He 
gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believ- 
eth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting 
life.” When God pardons it is not by a deed drawn 
up in legal form. He pardons as a father pardons. 
And Christ is our best guide here. The father 
pardons, not in any half-hearted fashion, but with 
all the buoyancy of His nature. “ Bring forth the 
best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his 
hand, and shoes on his feet.” There is a romance 
about the description that is refreshing. St. Paul 
draws attention to it in his great letter to the 
Romans, when he says: “ Where sin abounded, 
grace did much more abound.” This is how God 
acts: this is how Christ reveals to us the Father’s 
heart of Love; and this is surely to be the rule for 
our lives, if our religion is to become the religion 
of the Second Mile. 


Ill 


THE GARDEN OF GOD 

“Awake! O North wind; and come thou South: blow 
upon my garden that the spices thereof may flow out.” 

—Solomon's Song iv: 16 . 

M Y subject today is the Garden of God. It 
was suggested to me during the past Sum¬ 
mer while visiting a private garden, in the 
most beautiful part of Connecticut. I can still 
close my eyes, and I am back in that glorious gar¬ 
den, perhaps the most beautiful to be found in any 
part of the country. The simple fact is, it is more 
than a garden: it is a veritable Garden of God. 

It is as impossible to describe the enchantment 
of my memory-garden, as it is to paint a soul: such 
loveliness must be felt, and then re-captured in vis¬ 
ions, and dreams. In the presence of such bewil¬ 
dering beauty, one can at least be thankful for the 
vision. This was the attitude of Kingsley, who 
said: “ Beauty is God’s handwriting; a way-side 
sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, fair 
sky, fair flower, and thank Him for it, who is the 
Author of all loveliness.” From the lawn near the 
mansion to the vine-covered lattice close to the 
Indian House, with its curios, and quaint souvenirs 
at the foot of the garden, covering some five or six 


43 


44 


THE GARDEN OF GOD 


acres, may be seen flowers, flowers, flowers, shrubs, 
plants, and spices, all laid out in the most exquisite 
order, and every kind artistically separated by 
grass-carpeted walks. 

The Lady of the Mansion, not only enjoys the 
beautiful, but with a heart full of the influences 
of the Divine Spirit, opens her grounds daily to 
visitors. 

Announcements are made by her through the 
public press to all who dwell in the vicinity, when 
the flowers are at their best, to visit her garden, 
and thus share in her joy. While strolling through 
the grounds, on two or three occasions, with a 
friend I caught myself repeating the lines that un¬ 
bidden leaped to memory: 

t 

“ The kiss of the sun for pardon, 

The song of the birds for mirth; 

One is nearer God’s heart in a garden, 

Than anywhere else on earth.” 

MEADOWS OE MEMORY 

Since that memorable visit, my thoughts have 
turned scores of times to the text before us today: 
“ Awake! O North wind; and come thou South: 
blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may 
flow out,” and frequently I have linked these words 
with my memories of that August day. The text 
is taken from a seldom read book of the Bible; yet 
a book rich in lyrical, and emotional expression: a 
book which has for its object the heightening and 


THE GARDEN OF GOD 


45 


hallowing of human love. But human love in its 
highest form will always conduct us upward to¬ 
wards that Divine Love, of which it is the symbol 
and the sign. In addition to this, the sheer poetic 
beauty of our text makes a rich and powerful ap¬ 
peal to us all, so that I make no apology today for 
taking this passage as the keynote of my message 
on the Garden of God. As we allow the passage to 
sink into our souls with its music, and suggestion 
of mysticism, it will, I am persuaded, call up ideas 
and images, that are associated with all that is high¬ 
est, holiest, and tenderest in human life. It was 
with such thoughts in his mind that a modem poet 
of distinction gave expression to his sense of unique 
companionship in his own garden in a few signifi¬ 
cant lines:— 

« 

“I’m never alone in the garden/’ he said; 

“ I’m never alone with the flowers: 

It seems like I’m meeting the wonderful dead 
Out here with these blossoms of ours. 

\ i 

“ And, there’s never a bush, or a plant, or a tree, 

But somebody loved it of old. 

And the souls of the Angels come talking to me 
Through the petals of crimson and gold.” 

Let me now invite you today to accompany me in 
a walk through these meadows of memory. One of 
the choicest tilings about a garden is its power to 
store the memory with pictures, and to make the 
mind vibrate with associations that may be drawn 


46 


THE GARDEN OF GOD 


on in days to come. This is especially true of the 
garden in our thought today. The sweet odours of 
the spices still fill the air for me; the songs of the 
birds, and the beauty and profusion of the flowers 
are before me; the shadows on the distant hills, and 
the sound of the breeze in the trees, I can still see 
and hear; and highest of all, the happy human fel¬ 
lowship, all are mine. Let us try and recapture 
some of these impressions, and in order that we 
may do so, let all join in the aspiration of our text: 
“Awake! O North wind; and come thou South: 
blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may 
flow out.” It is an aspiration that we all may de¬ 
voutly offer, to the Spirit of the Living God. 

GARDEN—A GOOD TEACHER 

Notice at the outset that a garden is a good 
teacher of great moral and spiritual truths. It is 
full of similitudes, filled with the deepest signifi¬ 
cance for moral and spiritual growth. How does 
this appear? Well, as a garden is taken out of the 
common ground to be appropriated to a particular 
use, so the Church of Christ is chosen from the rest 
of the world. In a garden, nothing that is good 
comes up naturally, but as it is planted and set; so 
nothing is good in our human nature, but what is 
put there by the Heavenly Husbandman. A garden 
stands always in need of weeding, and dressing; so 
it is with Christ’s people, else their spiritual graces 
are in peril of being overgrown, and so becoming 


THE GARDEN OF GOD 


47 


useless. The training of the heart like the training 
of a garden is not the work of a single day, but a 
matter of constant vigilance; and in the soul, as in 
the garden, the blossom and the fruit repay the 
toil. A little attention bestowed in its season on the 
soul, and on the garden, is easier and much more 
effective than labour postponed until a later period. 

Whenever possible, every one should own a gar¬ 
den. It has been said by a distinguished artist, that 
there is no charm more alluring than a well loved 
garden, and that such a garden does not happen; it 
grows out of the knowledge, the thought, and the 
love that some one puts into its creation. A garden 
is a creation of love, and a school to teach the 
thoughts of God. This was the view of Thomas 
Edward Brown, the Welsh poet, in the loveliest 
lyric on a garden written in our day. He calls it: 
“ My Garden,” and I think it will appeal to you, 
especially the closing line:— 

“ A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot! 

Rose plot, 

Fringed pool, 

Ferned grot: 

The veriest-school 

Of peace, and yet the fool 
Contends that God is not— 

Not God in gardens! when the eve is cool? 

Nay, but I have a sign: 

’Tis very sure; God walks in mine.” 

Yes, without question, the garden is a teacher and 
a good teacher of great moral and spiritual truths. 


48 


THE GARDEN OF GOD 


SHOWS DESIGN AND BEAUTY 
Notice next that a garden is a place in which we 
look for design and beauty on every side. The 
measure of each to be found will depend on the re¬ 
sources of the owner. For instance, the hanging 
gardens of ancient Babylon—called one of the 
seven wonders of the world—were designed by one 
of the Assyrian Kings who married a woman he 
loved from a province, where her early life had 
been spent in fields and gardens. He brought her 
from her country home to the enclosure of the 
palace of Babylon, in which the Assyrian Kings 
lived; because she silently pined for the green 
places of her girlhood, and because he loved her, he 
made gardens for her not only within the palace, 
but upon terraces raised with earth, over the arched 
roofs and even upon the top of the highest tower: 
the most spacious, most pleasant, and most costly 
gardens, that have ever been heard of in the 
world; so that Babylon was, in reality, the first 
garden city known on earth. Nature is lavish of 
her gifts to those who will devote them to Na¬ 
ture’s altruistic ends. So that a garden, in any 
age, demands plan, purpose, care and expression, 
on the part of its proprietor, if beauty is there to 
be found. 

In the garden of my memory, this design was in 
evidence on every side, in the arrangement, and 
grouping of the various flowers and colours. As I 
reflect on this grouping of the colours, into which 



THE GARDEN OF GOD 


49 


the various parts of the garden were divided, I am 
inclined to think that there was more than a grain 
of truth, in the suggestion of an old scientist, who 
said that the annual succession of colours in flowers 
corresponds, on the whole, to that of the colours in 
the rainbow. Each walk had its own arrangement, 
design, and especial colour, which gave a distinction 
that was noteworthy to look on, and pleasant to 
recall. Amid the plethora of the flowers on every 
side, it is also pleasing to recall the beauty of the 
rose-garden, with its burnished globe-mirror in the 
centre, reflecting the house, the grounds, the sky, 
the fountain, the flowers, and those looking at it, 
and it seems to me as if every flower was an auto¬ 
graph from the finger of God. 

It was the late Professor John Fiske who likened 
our Universe to a garden, and more particularly to 
a rose that is gradually unfolding itself in sym¬ 
metry and beauty. So by a more personal simile, 
we might compare each individual to the develop¬ 
ment of a flower, in the great Conservatory or 
Garden of God. 

By the Garden of God, we mean the soul of the 
believer, and in a wider sense the Christian Church. 
So to my mind it is evident that the Church is the 
Garden of God, in its design and beauty. The 
Church is the expression and development of the 
thought of God in the soul. St. Paul says: “We 
are God’s workmanship,” which literally means: 
“ We are God’s poems.” As the flowers in their 


50 


THE GARDEN OF GOD 


beauty are the smiles of God’s goodness, so His 
people are the expression of His love and grace. 

It is wonderful to dwell on the thought of God’s 
design to make His people beautiful, and the care 
He takes to accomplish His purpose. There is an 
old parable that may help to make this plain to us. 
It is the parable of the brier-bush that was found 
growing in a ditch, and which was discovered one 
day by a gardener, with his spade. As he dug 
around it, and lifted it out, the brier said to itself: 
“ I wonder what he means? Does he know that I 
am only an old brier?” Then the gardener took 
it into his garden, and planted it amid his flowers, 
while the brier said: “ What a mistake he has made 
in planting me in this lovely garden! ” But the 
gardener came once more with his keen-edged 
knife, made a slit in the brier, and budded it with a 
rose, so that when the summer came lovely roses 
were blooming on that old brier-bush. Then the 
gardener as he looked at it one day, said: “ Your 
beauty is not due to that which came out, but that 
which I decided to put into you.” 

This is a picture and a parable of what God is 
doing all the time with our poor, and unworthy 
lives. They often seem to be of little use, with no 
hope that they will ever be of use in this world. 
Then God in His gracious design takes them in 
hand. He pours His love upon us in and through 
Christ, lifts us out of the dust, and puts something 
of His own nature into our souls. Then we trace 



THE GARDEN OF GOD 


51 


not alone His gracious design, but in some measure 
we also manifest to others His beauty. A good 
prayer for all is “ Let the beauty of the Lord our 
God be upon us ”; the beauty of holiness, by which 
we show forth His praise in our lives or perhaps 
better at the moment: “Awake! O North wind; 
and come thou South: blow upon my garden, that 
the spices thereof may flow out.” 

GIVES PROTECTION AND PEACE 

Further, The garden is a spot in which we seek 
for protection and for peace. This is especially 
true of Oriental lands where the garden was in 
danger of being laid waste, by the wild boar of the 
woods, or being destroyed by the beasts of the field. 
Because of this danger, the Eastern garden is 
usually a protected place, so that its owner, and his 
friends may have quietude. A wall was erected, or 
a hedge planted around it, not for repression, but 
rather that every flower should have the fullest lib¬ 
erty to express itself, and that visitors might be 
undisturbed. Such a restraint makes for freedom, 
in order that the flowers may reach their best. 

In my memory garden of Connecticut, this pro¬ 
tection and peace were features that impressed me 
much. It is enclosed on every side, and yet not so 
absolutely closed that it is an impossibility to enter 
it by night or day; the beautiful faith of the Lady 
of the Flowers was such, that she could not and 
would not believe that any one would seek to injure 


52 


THE GARDEN OF GOD 


her garden, or take any undue advantage of her 
kindness. To the credit of the district let it be said 
that rarely has her confidence been abused, and on 
the one or two occasions that it has been abused, 
she will not allow that it was intentional. Her own 
peace of mind is reflected in every part of the gar¬ 
den and also in the Bird Sanctuary, on another part 
of the estate, where one has a sense of security, that 
is as rare as it is refreshing: a security that sug¬ 
gests to one, God’s own perfect tranquility. 

All this also suggests to us the protection and 
peace of the Church, as the Garden of God. I 
wonder do we think of this sufficiently? We all 
recognize the protection of the home, and how 
much this means for childhood, and youth, but let 
us not forget that God has given us also the pro¬ 
tection of the Church. The Church guards us in 
our infancy by baptism, and all that it represents 
and implies. It guards us by spiritual fellowship, 
and by its constant opportunities of service. It 
protects us by its worship, nowhere more needed 
than in this our crowded city, where so many are 
liable to lose the vision of God. Just as you needed 
the home when you were children, so we need the 
ministrations of the Church until our last hour. 
The peace and joy of that tender guardianship is, 
that it checks nothing which is good and beautiful, 
but fosters all that has been planted there by Christ, 
thus helping us in the fulness of growth in the 
Garden of God. 


THE GARDEN OF GOD 


53 


REVEALS UNITY AND VARIETY 
Again, a garden is meant to give pleasure to its 
owner, and to all who may visit it, by its growth in 
unity, amid variety: What a pleasure is afforded by 
a garden! What secrets the flowers can tell us! 
When we ask them the secret of their beauty, they 
tell us, that there is not a line of colour in any part, 
not an outline in any petal, not a curve in any leaf, 
that could be spared, or altered. Maeterlinck has a 
fascinating theory: he believes that the flowers 
possess not only variety, but intelligence, and it 
gives him constant pleasure to find the proofs of it 
from time to time. His idea is that the ox-eyed 
daisy is the dull boy of the flower-world, and the 
orchid the highest achievement. As an example of 
the intelligence of flowers may be instanced the case 
of a little plant, which for a long time looked quite 
stunted, and unhealthy. But suddenly, without any 
apparent reason, it blossomed out in the most extra¬ 
ordinary way. What had happened? When in¬ 
vestigation was made, it was found that the plant 
had thrown out a feeler underneath its pot, and sent 
it over to an invalid plant, which was being tended, 
and doctored, by means of a particularly rich soil. 
In this astute way, the little plant absorbed the rich 
soil, from another, but which that other plant was 
unable to fully use. This certainly looks like intel¬ 
ligence, and would seem to bear out the view not 
only of Maeterlinck, but of Wordsworth, who said 
in the middle of the past century: 


54 1 


THE GARDEN OF GOD 


“ It is my faith, that every flower, 

Enjoys the air it breathes.” 

Be this as it may, the pleasure afforded by a 
garden is great, and my memory-garden in this 
respect, has many tender, and helpful associations. 
It gives real delight to its owner, and to the visitors 
who enjoy its beauty and its bounty; and who have 
the pleasure of seeing such unity amid variety. 
Think of the pleasure in watching the simplest 
flower unfold itself! consider the exquisite delight 
in marking the various stages in the development 
of a rose! 

Little wonder that the rose, and all the flowers 
give such pleasure when we dwell on the mystery 
and the glory in their life. 

So it is with the Christian Church. The Church 
as the Garden of God gives pleasure and refresh¬ 
ment to God, Himself. We are told by the Psalm¬ 
ist: “ The Lord takes pleasure in His people; He 
will beautify the meek with Salvation.” Our lives 
should always be of such a character as to give 
pleasure and satisfaction to Christ. If your soul is 
truly the garden of the Lord, you will say, “ Let 
my beloved come into His garden, and eat His 
pleasant fruits.” 

The Church not alone gives pleasure to God, by 
its growth, but it may be compared to a garden in 
its variety. As the garden is planted with diverse 
sorts of flowers, and fruits, some being famed for 
their colour, others for their form, and still others 


THE GARDEN OF GOD 


55 


for their fragrance; so it is in the Church of 
Christ: they are all in the garden where they flour¬ 
ish side by side. In Tennyson’s “ Becket ” the poet 
says: “ Men are God’s trees, and women are God’s 
flowers.” A beautiful line, but all alike belong to 
Him. Let us not criticize our brethren who are not 
made precisely after our pattern, but rather take 
pleasure in the variety manifested, when planted by 
the same hand, and growing in the same garden. 
Let the life that God has given find its own expres¬ 
sion. The lofty palm and the lowly pansy: the 
radiant rose, and the sweet mignonette; “ the fir 
tree, the pine tree, and the box together,” all tend 
to make the Garden of God one of great variety; 
but underneath all this seeming divergence, and 
many differences, there is an underlying basis of 
unity amongst Christians everywhere. 

IMPARTS PLENTIFUL FRAGRANCE 

Finally, The garden is a place which gives freely 
of its fragrance , far and near. It is thus a type of 
the influence we may all exert in the Garden of 
God. You may remember how the good Bishop in 
Victor Hugo’s “ Les Miserables ” said that his de¬ 
sires centred around two things: some stars in the 
sky, and some flowers on this earth. That was a 
happy combination, for the flowers have been 
called: “ Stars of the earth.” 

“ Bright gems of earth in which perchance we see, 
What Eden was, what Paradise may be.” 


56 


THE GARDEN OF GOD 


Nothing in the physical world is more mysterious 
than the fragrance of the flowers. It has baffled all 
attempts to define either its substance or its action: 
as for its cause, it is just as great a mystery as 
ever. And yet, the flowers give their fragrance 
with a profusion and prodigality, that is tireless, 
but with no apparent diminution of substance. 
How minute these particles of fragrance are may 
be gathered from the experiments of a famous 
French scientist, who calculated that it would take 
a hundred thousand years to bring about the loss of 
one milligram of musk, through the escape and ex¬ 
halation of its perfume. 

AWAKENS OED MEMORIES 

The fragrance of the flowers carries the mind 
back on all the previous years of our fleeting life. 
A thousand memories return to us unbidden. It is 
a sacred thing to re-live one’s life from our first 
primrose gathering of childhood, to the joys of 
last summer, with its new perfumes awakening 
old memories, almost too sacred to mention. 
These old memories cover the meadows of the 
heart, and as we walk among them, a gentler, 
tenderer, and more receptive temper fills our whole 
being, and perchance fits us more fully for the re¬ 
mainder of life. 

My own thoughts were illuminated and inter¬ 
preted by a word from my companion, who said 
that to him, “ this place seems like holy ground.” 


THE GARDEN OF GOD 


57 


That unconscious remark made me think of one of 
my favourite passages in “ The Mill on the Floss,” 
by George Eliot, and which I shall now take the 
liberty of quoting in full. George Eliot is dealing 
with the associations of childhood, reflected in the 
life of later years. She says: “Life did change 
for Tom and Maggie, and yet they were not wrong 
in believing that the thoughts and loves of those 
first years would always make part of their lives. 
We could never have loved the earth so well if we 
had no childhood in it; if it were not the earth 
where the same flowers come up again every spring 
that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we 
sat lisping to ourselves on the grass; the same hips 
and haws in the hedgerows; the same redbreasts 
that we used to call ‘ God’s birds,’ because they did 
no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is 
worth that sweet monotony, where everything is 
known, and loved, simply because it is known.” 
What a parable of our life in this world. It is a 
good old world, always arresting, and always inter¬ 
esting. The spell of the past is awakened by the 
perfume of the flowers, and the glamour of gold 
and green lying upon the world’s breast in the new 
summer. One may almost dare to say, as he thinks 
of Shakespeare: 

“ Rosemary, pansies, hearts-ease, rue: 

These are my garden flowers; 

Memories, thoughts, and responses true: 

These are my blossomed hours.” 


58 


THE GARDEN OF GOD 


There is another thought suggested by the fra¬ 
grance of the flowers, and that is the fragrance of 
a life that is planted in the Garden of God. The 
influence of such a life is immortal for good, in the 
church and in the world. Take a sprig of lavender 
and put it under a bell-glass. What is the result? 
It soon dies, killed by the poison of its own per¬ 
fume; but release it, and it divides its fragrance 
with all in the room. So the selfish life, through 
living to itself, dies, while the life that serves gives 
a fragrant influence on every side. Such a life 
leaves the world brighter and better for having 
been in it. 


NEEDS SUITABLE ATMOSPHERE 

All life needs the atmosphere, and every garden 
needs the wind for the production of its flowers, 
and fruits, and fragrance. A Chinese proverb 
says: “ There are no flowers without the wind, 
which scatters the seeds.” The garden needs the 
cold keen winds from the North, to quicken the 
powers that lie dormant during winter, and then 
the soft South wind, with its gentle breath, that 
the flowers may unfold, and the fragrance go forth. 
Here, the North wind is prayed for to start the 
colours. This suggests the work of the Divine 
Spirit, in revealing our sin, and need. The poet 
also prays for the South wind to blow on his gar¬ 
den; the South wind to melt us into gratitude, 
praise and service to God. 


THE GARDEN OF GOD 


59 


In nature we cannot have both these winds 
blowing at once, yet in the realm of grace this is 
possible. Nature can do much for us. Standing 
in the heart of the country one does not wonder 
that Emerson says: “ The happiest man is he who 
has learned from nature the lesson of worship.” 
Yes, Nature is a great teacher, but Grace is even a 
greater one. How often have we watched the 
grace of God bring out of the blackest mind and 
life the sweetest flowers of love and pity and ser¬ 
vice, and made them roses in the Garden of the 
Lord. 

It is said that in Holland the rose is sometimes 
cultivated by planting a rose of an ordinary type 
close to one of unusual beauty and fragrance. The 
common rose is carefully watched, and its anthers 
removed, so as to avoid its propagating its own 
species, the object of course being that it shall be 
pollenized by the superior variety of rose. Grad¬ 
ually the rose thus treated takes upon itself the 
characteristics of the nobler and sweeter life of its 
neighbour in the garden. It is a striking illustra¬ 
tion of what happens when we permit ourselves to 
be planted in the garden of Jesus. Our lives re¬ 
ceive the influence of His own Divine spirit. We 
become like Him. We lose the characteristics of 
the lower life to which we have been accustomed, 
and begin to show the nobler life of Him who is 
the Rose of Sharon, and the Lily of the Valley. 

In this gracious process, which may be experi- 


60 


THE GARDEN OF GOD 


enced by all who yield their hearts to Him, the 
Holy Spirit may at the same time work grief and 
gladness. Each of us may be conscious of this, 
through Christ, so that as we die to sin, we may 
live the fuller life of God. God does not open a 
flower with a crowbar, or a peal of thunder. He 
opens it as He opens most of our hearts, gently, 
even though there may have been some preparatory 
work: opens it as He brings in the joy of spring, 
and the riches of summer; and, in view of this let 
me invite you all to join in this prayer: “ Awake! 
O North wind; and come thou South: blow upon 
my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out.” 
In other words, you may say: 

“ Come sweet South Wind ! and blow around my heart, 
Open some flowers of grace to please my Lord: 

Find there some fragrance, that may freshly start, 
Some savour of true gratitude afford. 

» 

“ Oh, Breath of God ! breathe Thou around my life ! 
Nay, breathe within me: make my heart all fair. 

Wake, strengthen, purify, give rest from strife, 

Until He sees His own clear image there.” 


IV 


THE SOUL’S UNION WITH CHRIST 

“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot 
bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more 
can ye except ye abide in Me .”— John xv: 4. 

W HAT it was suggested this lovely parable 
to our Lord, we cannot say with precision. 
All we know is that it was the habit of 
His mind to go to the realm of nature for many of 
the royal principles and illustrations which reveal 
to us the mystery of the Divine life in the soul. 
But surely never was our Lord’s teaching more 
simple, and yet at the same time, more truly pro¬ 
found than in this parable of the vine, and its 
branches. It is as Lord Tennyson once said: “ Per¬ 
fection beyond compare.” 

The vine—which in Western lands is half exotic 
—was one of the chief products of Palestine: it 
flourished along every hillside. Holy Scripture is 
full of references to the vine-dresser’s craft, the 
fruit of the vineyard, and the vintage festival at 
the end of the season. Not infrequently in the Old 
Testament do we find the vine used as a representa¬ 
tion of the Jewish Church. On many of the an¬ 
cient Jewish coins we also find stamped a spray of 
vine-leaves, or a cluster of grapes as a kind of 




THE SOUL’S UNION WITH CHRIST 

national emblem of Israel, in much the same way 
that the rose is the emblem of England, the thistle 
of Scotland, the shamrock of Ireland, and the 
leek of gallant little Wales, the land of the moun¬ 
tain and the flood. When Herod the Great re¬ 
stored the Temple to more than its early splendour, 
he placed above its chief entrance the golden image 
of a vine. It is just possible that Jesus at this time 
may have passed from the upper room into the 
Temple Courts. As He looked up over the gate¬ 
way, and observed the vine, the visible symbol of 
the ancient Church, He may have said: I am the 
true vine, the ideal vine, the vine which Israel 
claimed to be, but fell short of in experience. Or 
it may be that a real vine was seen fluttering in the 
night wind as our Lord passed from the upper 
room to the moonlit street, thus suggesting to Him 
this matchless parable. If this is so—and it seems 
to me most probable—it would indeed be a sig¬ 
nificant token of our Lord’s calmness in view of 
His Passion and Death. In that trying hour He 
turned for the last time to the Book of Nature, 
opened its pages reverently, and used it for the 
purpose of teaching the most priceless truths that 
ever fell from His lips to the little band of His 
followers. 

The great central truth that Jesus wished to un¬ 
fold at this time, and to impress on the sensitive 
minds of His disciples, was the reality of the Soul’s 
union with Himself. He pictures the nature of 



THE SOUL’S UNION WITH CHRIST qs 

this union in the imagery of the vine and its 
branches, and imagery which permits us to enter 
into the heart of God through the grace of Jesus 
Christ. Incidentally He also corrects two false 
conceptions of the Christian life, which if not 
remedied work havoc and ruin to the soul. One of 
these false conceptions is, that the Christian life is 
a hard, formal, and mechanical thing; while the 
other is that it is a careless, happy-go-lucky sort of 
thing, requiring no cultivation or care or culture. 
Both errors are corrected by the figure He employs, 
a figure which embodies all that is truest, and deep¬ 
est, and sweetest, and strongest, in the Christian 
religion; which is the eternal religion for the life 
of man in a sin-stained world. 

based on experience 

The Soul's union with Christ is not artificial, or 
arbitrary, but organic. It is a vital union, a union 
which includes the lowliest member of the Chris¬ 
tian family. Because this union is vital, it is ex¬ 
perimental, that is born of a personal experience. 
The late Bishop Moule defines it as “ Conscious 
Union ” and such a view commends itself not only 
to the scholar, but to the saint. No external or 
temporary union will suffice: no work of man can 
effect it. The soul’s union with Christ is the work 
of Christ Himself, in response to the venture of 
faith. Christ, and God in Christ, brings the be¬ 
liever into fellowship with the Heavenly Vine, 


6*/THE SOUL’S UNION WITH CHRIST 

which means into harmony with the Redeemer’s 
purpose. 

Let us return to our Lord’s figure, which reveals 
to us the secret of all vital religion. He says: “ I 
am the vine; ye are the branches.” How intimate! 
How precious! How vital. Personally, I am al¬ 
ways helped in my study of this subject by recalling 
my experiences in boyhood, when I had the oppor¬ 
tunity of seeing some notable vines. In several of 
these the pliant branches stretched scores of yards 
along the espaliers, and yet one life pervaded the 
whole from the root, through the stem, right away 
to the most distant leaf, and cluster of grapes. So 
one life passes from Christ to all who abide in Him 
by faith. “ Abide in Me,” He says; “and I in 
you.” Each branch grows out of the vine-stock, 
and depends on it for all its supplies or nourish¬ 
ment ; so says Christ: “ Apart from Me, ye can do 
nothing.” If there were tongues in trees, and such 
a branch could speak it might well whisper: “I 
live, yet not I, for the vine-stock liveth in me.” 
Because the vine lives, the branches also live. Such 
a union is vital, continuous, and complete. 

There is a quaint mediaeval saying which brings 
home to us the practical side of this union in a 
striking way: “ Matter and form make a body; 
body and soul make a man; a man and Christ make 
a Christian.” A Christian is therefore one who is 
united to Christ by living faith: one who has the 
life of Christ transfused into His spiritual nature: 


THE SOUL’S UNION WITH CHRIST 6* 


one whose heart beats in tune with the pulses of the 
Divine will and purpose. Christ’s thoughts work 
in our thoughts; Christ’s choice rules our wishes; 
while Christ’s love and life constrains and colours 
all the actions of the common day. We are joined 
to Him, in a vital union of affection, devotion, and 
a heartfelt desire to do His will. The tender 
prayer of Whittier is one that we may all well offer 
to our Divine Cord:— 

“ Deep strike Thy roots, O Heavenly Vine, 

Within our earthly sod: 

Most human, and yet most Divine, 

The Flower of man and God.” 

RESUI/TS IN ERUITFUIyNESS 

The Soul's Union with Christ results in fruitful¬ 
ness of Christian character. Fruitfulness follows 
union with Christ, as the shadow follows the sun, 
or as effect, its adequate cause. Indeed union with 
Christ is the secret of all fruitbearing in daily life. 
There may be plenty of activity, and yet barrenness 
of soul, because the soul lacks the life that follows 
union with its Lord. 

It is at this part of our subject we touch the dis¬ 
tinctive blessedness and glory of the Gospel, other 
systems approach us and tell us how we ought to 
live, but Christ imparts to us His life. There is a 
profound meaning in that mystical but precious 
passage in another part of John’s writings where 
he says: “ God hath given unto us Eternal Life, and 


66 THE SOUL’S UNION WITH CHRIST 


this life is in His Son.” This life unfolds itself in 
beautiful character: character that is known as 
Christian. A copy to follow is all very good, but 
what is the use of giving a man a copy if he cannot 
copy it ? Morality looks down on the lame man, the 
man crippled by sin, and says: “ See here! this is 
the standard of conduct by which you ought to live, 
and walk.” But Christianity bends over the cripple 
and says: “ In the name of Jesus Christ of Naza¬ 
reth, rise up and walk.” Christ gives more than a 
pattern; more than a standard; more than a motive; 
more than a law: He gives life. This life flows 
from union with Himself, and results in the virtues 
we possess. 

At “ Wordsworth’s seat ” near Lake Winder- 
mere there may be seen an illustration of this union 
and fruitfulness, which is very suggestive. Incred¬ 
ible though it may seem, an oak, an ash, and a holly 
tree are all growing out of a common stock of oak, 
and have become so interwoven in fibres as to be 
almost indistinguishable. What an illustration of 
the fruitfulness which follows abiding union with 
Christ! 

The way to be fruitful is to abide in Christ 
rather than by efforts after individual acts of con¬ 
formity to His will, however needful and precious 
these may be. There is something deeper than acts 
of obedience: it is to cultivate unbroken communion 
with Christ. Nine times in this parable do we find 
the term “ Abide in Christ ” in one form or an- 


THE SOUL’S UNION WITH CHRIST 67/ 

other, which shows the value of the central thought 
in our text. “ Abide in Me: ”—is not this what 
the sun is constantly saying to our little earth 
planet ? The sun says: “ Remain in the solar sys¬ 
tem : resist the temptation to fly off into space and I 
will abide in you, in the verdure of the vegetation, 
in the formation of thy rocks, and in the life of all 
living things.” " Abide in me: ”—is not this what 
the ocean says to the little cave which shows signs 
of separation from its mighty waves? The ocean 
says: “ Keep thy channel open, and twice in every 
twenty-four hours I will pour of my fulness to 
your most distant shore, giving freshness to what 
otherwise would soon become foul.” “ Abide in 
me ”—Is not this what the vine-stock says to the 
branches ? The vine-stock says to the branch: 
“ Continue in me, and I shall send to your utmost 
leaf, and cluster, my life so that you may have 
abundance of fruit in its season.” And “ Abide in 
me: ”—is not this what Christ says to every one 
who is a genuine Christian? Christ says: “ Abide 
in Me, and I in you: as the branch cannot bear 
fruit except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, 
except ye abide in Me.” To abide in Christ is the 
lesson we all need to learn. 

OPEN SECRET 

This is the open secret of fruitfulness in the 
Christian life. It says to us: “ Get more of Christ’s 
life into the soul; and the speech and conduct will 


68 THE SOUL’S UNION WITH CHRIST 


soon become more Christ-like.” Some good people 
cultivate individual graces at the expense of har¬ 
mony and beauty, and balance in character. The 
true way to influence conduct is to influence the 
springs of conduct. To make a man’s life better, 
the chief thing is to make the man better. The 
great way to do good is to be good, and the great 
way to be good is to join the life—by faith—with 
the good One God—in Christ. This is the Chris¬ 
tian way: this is God’s way: this is Christ’s way, 
to first receive, and then out of the life that is hid 
with Christ in God, to give forth fruit to His 
praise and glory. 

It is interesting to observe that there are four 
stages of fruit-bearing mentioned in this chapter. 
These are (1) fruit: (2) much fruit: (3) more 
fruit: (4) abiding fruit. There is a definite 
thought attached to each stage, as may be seen by 
studying verses IV, V, VIII and XVI respectively. 
Each verse is a window which permits the light 
of Christ to fall on the soul’s pathway. The secret 
of fruitfulness is union with Christ. The secret 
of much fruit is communion with Christ. The 
secret of more fruit is the discipline of the hus¬ 
bandman. The secret of abiding fruit is, on the 
Divine side—His choice of us for service, and on 
the human side—our choice of Him, our friend, 
who by His friendship develops the soul’s best life 
in fruitfulness. In other words, the abiding fruit 
springs on the negative side from the death of the 



THE SOUL’S UNION WITH CHRIST 69 


self-life; while on the positive side, it is merged 
into the life of Christ. As the branch bears fruit 
because it identifies itself with the tree, so the 
abundant and abiding fruitfulness of character fol¬ 
lows identification with Christ. To an American 
citizen, his country’s triumph is his triumph? His 
country’s defeat is his defeat. So it is with the 
Christian: he rejoices when Christ is honoured; and 
he weeps when Christ is defamed. This is the 
secret of fruit-bearing that is permanent, and this 
profound truth finds a place in the programme of 
Christ, for every life. 

purpose oE pruning 

The soul united with Christ needs the pruning of 
the Husbandman. In this parable the Father is 
represented as the Husbandman, but in other parts 
of the New Testament, Christ assumes this office 
Himself. It is wonderful how our Lord here 1 ^ 
refers to life’s discipline, by the use of a single 
word—pruning: indeed it is the only kind of hus¬ 
bandry that finds recognition. And of all plants, 
none need the pruning knife so unsparingly as the 
vine, but with care and cultivation, it yields a rich 
reward. Indeed in the whole plant world there is 
not any plant or tree to be found so specially suited 
to be the image of man in relation to God, as the 
vine: none where the growth is so ready to run to 
wood, fit only for the rubbish heap or the fire. 
Nothing in the garden is so severely or so sedu- 


70 THE SOUL’S UNION WITH CHRIST 

lously pruned. So the Heavenly Husbandman 
prunes our lives after the same plan. Hopes and 
habits, as natural as the young vine shoots, are cut 
off and cast away, that the central life of our Lord 
may flow through us without being directed into 
worthless channels. Christ’s pruning is not with¬ 
out purpose. 

I wonder if any of you have ever been in a vine¬ 
yard at the season for pruning the vines ? Once I 
had such an opportunity, and it was truly a sight 
never to be forgotten. It seemed to me, at first 
sight, to be the most reckless and flagitious waste 
that I had ever witnessed. There was the vine¬ 
dresser busy with his knife lopping off the bright 
green leaves, or incipient clusters, which were scat¬ 
tered on every side, while the bare stems and 
branches seemed bleeding at a hundred points from 
the sharp steel. But as I watched with a wonder, 
and a growing interest, it was soon evident that 
there was not a random stroke in it all. There was 
nothing cut away that it were not a loss to keep. 
So says Christ in this parable—pruning is needed 
not to improve the life in the branches, but to im¬ 
prove the branches in which is the life. The knife 
may be sharp, and the tendrils bleed, as the things 
that seem precious are taken away, but it is all done 
that the real force of our manhood may be flung 
into the production of fruit and God. And surely 
no stroke will be a stroke too heavy, or too deep, 
if it helps to this happy consummation. 



THE SOUL’S UNION WITH CHRIST 71 


It is related of the great and good Richard Cecil 
that once he fell into unusual dejection of mind and 
heart owing to the insults he had to endure, through 
having espoused the evangelical conception of 
Christianity, which he adorned in a piety that was 
both rare and refreshing in his day. Walking, one 
afternoon, in the Botanical Gardens at Oxford, 
his attention was drawn to a fine pomegranate 
tree, and he was surprised to find its stem cut 
almost through near the root. On asking the 
gardener the reason for such treatment the man 
replied: “ Sir, the tree used to shoot so strong that 
it bore nothing but leaves, therefore I was obliged 
to serve it in this manner. Now that it is almost 
cut through, it begins to bear plenty of fruit.” 
Richard Cecil, great soul that he was, went back to 
his room cheered and instructed, remembering the 
Saviour’s words on the necessity for pruning the 
living branches of the True Vine. 

God prunes, but never cuts off, a fruit-bearing 
branch. He acts like a great surgeon, taking away 
what is necessary to remove that He may give 
fruit, much fruit, more fruit, and abiding fruit: 
that He may—in a word—give fuller life. In a 
recent memorable address during the Passion 
Week Services in our city, Dr. S. Parkes Cadman, 
with great fervour, closed his message by exclaim¬ 
ing: “I would rather bleed before God’s pruning 
hand than burn outside the pale of His grace.” 
This noble philosophy of life is in line with the 


72 THE SOUL’S UNION WITH CHRIST 


deepest truths of Christianity, of which Dr. Cad- 
man is such an able and eloquent exponent. 

A similar philosophy of life has been given to 
the world by Mrs. Hamilton King, in her fine 
poem entitled: “ The Disciples,” a poem which is 
one of the most beautiful on the subject to be found 
in literature. She tells the story of the vine in 
detail; how it suffers beneath the pruning knife, 
and yields its best only to be despoiled by man. 
Such also is the history of Christ and His Church: 
always bearing fruit for the world, at the cost of 
suffering and sacrifice. Sacrifice is the law of 
Christ’s Kingdom. A self-centered religion, what¬ 
ever else it may be, is not the religion of Christ. 

What is the application of this great subject to 
us all? It is at least two-fold. The first part of it 
is, that apart from the vine-stock the branch can 
do nothing. To the vine-stock it owes its life, its 
beauty, and its fruitfulness. So Christ says: 
“ Without Me, ye can do nothing.” All that Christ 
has, or is, He puts at our disposal. But the con¬ 
verse is equally true: without the branch, the vine- 
stock can do nothing. A vine without branches 
can bear no fruit. And such is the wonderful con¬ 
descension of our Lord that just as His people are 
dependent on Him, so He is dependent on His 
people. Without His people—the branches of the 
living Vine, He cannot dispense His blessings to a 
needy world. Do you marvel at this? You need 
not marvel unduly, as it is His own appointment. 



THE SOUL’S UNION WITH CHRIST 73 

This is the high honour to which He has called 
you and me; an honour that carries with a re¬ 
sponsibility that may well make the stoutest heart 
tremble in view of the teaching He has given us in 
this parable. Meditate on this truth until your soul 
bows in the presence of such a mystery, the mys¬ 
tery and meaning of the soul’s union with Christ. 

parables oE liEE 

Let me enforce this application further by two 
parables drawn from real life. One of these refers 
to a young lad who while playing in his father’s 
orchard noticed that one tree bore rich and ripe 
apples, with the exception of a single branch that 
was bare of fruit and withered. His attention was 
arrested by the sight, and so he inquired of the 
gardener the cause of the fruitless and withered 
branch, and was told to climb the tree and that he 
would soon, upon examination, find out. The lad 
soon followed the gardener’s advice. When he 
reached the branch he noticed that some one had 
tied a piece of string tightly around it close to the 
trunk, thus stopping the flow of the sap to the 
branch, so that it withered, and bore no fruit. 

It is sometimes like this branch with us. The 
soul that is separated from Christ withers, and is 
fruitless. By unkindness, by evil temper, by im¬ 
pure words, by unworthy deeds, we permit some¬ 
thing which corresponds to this piece of string to 
shut off the flow of Christ’s life and love into our 


74 THE SOUL’S UNION WITH CHRIST 


lives. All sin, at all times, shuts out the life and 
love of Christ. 

The other parable refers to two vines, in the 
same glasshouse, which grew side by side. One 
bore abundant fruit, the other yielded none. They 
both had the same amount of care bestowed on 
them, the same amount of good soil, light, air, 
water, and nourishment, but no fruit was found on 
the one. And yet the leaves of this fruitless vine 
were green, flourishing, and healthy, but that only 
added to the disappointment of the gardener, who 
tended it with such care. 

At last an expert vine-dresser was called in, and 
in a professional way he overhauled the whole vine. 
When he dug below the surface with his spade, he 
discovered the secret. In days long gone a careless 
gardener, in tending to the soil around the tree, had 
inserted his sharp spade into the main stem, and 
had almost severed it from the parent vine, but not 
quite: just enough remained united to allow suf¬ 
ficient sap to flow through to keep the leaves in 
good condition, but not enough to bear fruit. 

What did the expert gardener do? Did he give 
up the vine as hopeless, and condemn it to be cut 
down as unworthy of a place in the greenhouse? 
This is what some expected, but the vine-dresser 
saw it in another light; not only what it was, but 
what it might become under his care. He resolved 
on healing the breach at all cost, and so from his 
pocket he drew his sharp knife, and very carefully, 


THE SOUL’S UNION WITH CHRIST 75 


very tenderly, and with an expert hand, he cut 
from the parent stem, far below the branch, a piece 
just big enough to fill the breach, and putting it in 
firmly, and bending it up, he took his departure. 
The result was all that could be desired. Today 
that vine is bearing abundance of fruit, each 
cluster being a silent testimony to the union that 
exists between itself and the parent vine. 

What hope in this for all disappointed hearts 
and sorrowful lives! The breach between you and 
Christ must be healed, and often it is only by the 
use of the pruning knife that His life and yours 
can be bound together. But soon the season of 
discipline is lost in the joy that His life flows fully, 
freely, and without hindrance in the soul, thus pro¬ 
ducing abundant fruit. 

Oh, thou whose life of Joy seems reft, 

Of beauty shorn, 

Whose, aspirations lie in dust. 

All bruised, and torn,— 

Rejoice, though each desire, each dream, 

Each hope of thine. 

Shall fall and fade: it is the hand 
Of Love divine— 

That holds the knife that cuts and breaks 
With tenderest touch, 

That thou whose life has borne some fruit, 

May now bear much. 


V 


THE CONQUEST OF ENVIRONMENT 

“ Though ye have lain among the pots, yet shall ye he 
as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her 
feathers with yellow gold .”— Psalm lxviii: 13. 

T HIS strange and picturesque text has been 
the cause of more discussion than perhaps 
any other single portion of Old Testament 
Scripture. Even the late Charles Haddon Spur¬ 
geon, in his “ Treasury of David,” calls it “a 
difficult nut to crack.” What is the connection 
between lying among the pots and the wings of a 
dove ? Why should a nation like Israel be likened 
to the plumage of a pigeon? And when was it 
possible to designate such plumage as either silver 
or gold, rather than a modest brown or humble 
grey? All these, and many other, questions have 
troubled succeeding generations of Bible scholars, 
even unto the present hour. 

There are two or three ways of looking at this 
text, which may be briefly considered in opening 
up the subject. The first is, we may regard it as 
somehow removed from its proper surroundings, 
inasmuch as the context gives us no clue to its in¬ 
terpretation. We see this in Nature. Naturalists 
tell us that they sometimes discover a plant flour- 


76 


THE CONQUEST OF ENVIRONMENT 77 


ishing in a soil and under skies that are alien to its 
order and habit. This child of tropical sunshine 
has found a sheltered spot in a valley in the Rocky 
Mountains, and raises its head among the sturdier 
growths, which brave the Northern winds. Some 
bird, or the currents of wind, or the ocean drift, or 
some traveller has unconsciously carried the seed, 
and what Ruskin once called " Co-operating fate,” 
has given it a congenial seed plot; so that it greets 
the eyes with a peculiar charm. 

May it not be so that this passage, and a few 
others, have found a place to which they did not 
originally belong? Possibly so, but whether or no, 
we are thankful it is in the Bible. Its music, its 
beauty, and its poetry, appeal to us with power, and 
it is our duty to seek for its explanation. 

The second view is to look upon it as a mistrans¬ 
lation. Many do so, and not a few Hebrew schol¬ 
ars have attempted other renderings, but the trouble 
is that these new attempts are all unsatisfactory. 
They make confusion worse confounded. From 
every point of view one prefers the text to remain 
as it is, with all its picturesque colour, and diffi¬ 
culty of exegesis. 

The third view is to look on this passage from 
the standpoint of John Robinson—the pastor of the 
Pilgrim Fathers—who said: “ God has yet more 
light to break forth from His Holy Word.” In 
fact, new light is continually being thrown on the 
Bible, and this text which for centuries was re- 


78 THE CONQUEST OF ENVIRONMENT 


garded as utterly unintelligible is now seen to be 
one of unusual fullness and beauty of meaning, 
once we have had the key to its interpretation 
placed in our hand. 

KEY TO PASSAGE 

What is the key that invests this passage with 
significance ? It has been placed at our disposal by 
a gifted Irish lady—Miss Whately—the daughter 
of a famous Archbishop of Dublin—in a volume 
entitled: “Life in Egypt.” In this volume she 
tells us that the houses in Egypt, with their flat 
roofs, are generally in such a condition of litter 
that she was afraid the roofs would break down 
under the accumulation. Particularly did she ob¬ 
serve the heaps of old pots, and pans, and pitchers 
of various kinds, piled up in some corner of the 
roof. During the heat of the day the doves were 
accustomed to hide themselves among these pots, 
and pans, in order to escape from the heat of the 
sun; but a little before sunset, they would suddenly 
emerge from behind the pitchers, and dart upwards 
through the air, flying in large circles. Seen 
against the light the pigeons appeared —although 
most of them white—to be turned into silver, while 
seen under the light, or directly overhead, the slant¬ 
ing rays of the setting sun painting them in colours 
of gold. It helped Miss Whately, as it helps us, to 
understand this passage: “ Though ye have lain 
among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a 


THE CONQUEST OF ENVIRONMENT 79 


dove covered with silver, and her feathers with 
yellow gold.” 

The meaning of the passage now becomes plain. 
It unfolds to us a precious promise of God, assur¬ 
ing us that a holy and unsoiled character may be 
maintained in this world, no matter how degrading 
the surroundings. From among the pots these 
beautiful doves would rise calm and unsullied to 
the heavens, their glistening wings as if burnished 
with silver, and their feathers covered with shining 
gold. Soiled surroundings, yet silver wings! What 
a study is here suggested in contrasted conditions 
of life and character! 

The subject that leaps into view is— The Con¬ 
quest of Environment. Could anything set it be¬ 
fore us in clearer light than this picture? On the 
one hand we see the doves among the pots: on the 
other we see the doves on the wing. On one side 
is the soul’s debasement, and degradation: on the 
other, the soul’s ascent into the heavenly places. 
Such is the picture before us today, a vivid and im¬ 
pressive picture of the Conquest of Environment 
in human life. 

begins with aspiration 

The Conquest of Environment begins with aspi¬ 
ration. The doves knew that their real environment 
was not amongst the pots on the roof. They aspired 
by their instincts to higher ideals, and an ideal is a 
standing invitation to a higher style of life. 


80 THE CONQUEST OF ENVIRONMENT 


This means the upward look, for no man can 
rise above his surroundings until he aspires to do 
so. No nation can emerge from its national evils, 
until its attitude to these evils is changed. 

The late George Frederick Watts, the famous 
artist—whose motto was, “ The Utmost for the 
Highest ”—has given the world a great national 
picture under the title of “ Aspiration.” It repre¬ 
sents a young soldier with large frank eyes and 
long wavy hair, while his body is clothed from 
head to feet with bright steel armour. One 
hand is touching the hilt of the sword by his 
side; in the other he carries the standard of his 
country, while around his brow there appears a 
bright halo. Everything suggests National As¬ 
piration, as he seeks to keep unsullied his coun¬ 
try’s flag. 

Now it is national aspiration that is suggested 
by our text today. The primary reference is to the 
Hebrew people emerging from the blackness and 
bondage of Egypt, or from the weary years of 
captivity in Babylon, or possibly to both events. 
The latter is by far the more probable, inasmuch as 
the whole psalm from which the text is taken seems 
to be a song of thanksgiving for the ending of the 
Babylonian exile. The mighty conqueror Cyrus is 
knocking at the gates of the Empire, which for 
thirty odd years had held the Hebrews in bondage. 
Already his unconquerable armies are outside the 
walls of mighty Babylon, and with the fall of that 


THE CONQUEST OF ENVIRONMENT 81 

city the way is open for the aspirations of the cap¬ 
tives to be realized, in the return of the Jews to 
their own land. 

At this point the passage bursts into clearness 
and beauty. It tells us that out of the old Israel, 
servile, materialistic, and degraded, there shall be 
seen a new Israel, exalted, spiritual, and glorious. 

Out of the dust and the debris of their degrading 
experiences the people of God shall rise clarified in 
vision, dignified in bearing, and beautiful in char¬ 
acter. Out of the darkness and the shadow, and 
the humiliation, they shall aspire to return to free¬ 
dom and prosperity, and national power, because 
the Eternal shall touch them with His splendour. 
In a word: “ Though they had lain among the pots, 
yet they were to be as the wings of a dove covered 
with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.” 

The obvious application of all this to America is 
evident on a moment’s thought. We all cherish the 
hope that America, after having emerged from the 
Great War, will be yet transfigured by the ideals 
which inspired her during that conflict. There are 
three attitudes, any one of which we may assume 
towards our country today. One is the attitude of 
the Stoic, which means indifference through hard¬ 
ening the heart to all the higher ideals of life. The 
next is the attitude of the Cynic, which simply 
sneers, and snaps, and snarls, at everything which' 
happens, and eventually produces bitterness of soul. 
There is the third attitude—the attitude of Chris - 


82 THE CONQUEST OF ENVIRONMENT 

tian aspiration, which believes in America, the 
real America, and longs to see it return to God. 
There is no easy way from earth to the stars: it is 
by aspiration, by struggle, by the Conquest of En¬ 
vironment. The soul of a nation must aspire, no 
less than the soul of the individual. The fine poem 
by J. G. Holland, entitled “ Gradatim,” sets this 
forth in a suggestive fashion: 

“ I count that thing to be grandly true, 

That a noble deed is a step toward God. 

Lifting the soul from the common clod, 

To a purer air, and a broader view.” 

ELEVATION OE CHARACTER 
The Conquest of Environment not only means 
aspiration in national affairs , but elevation in per¬ 
sonal life and character. This elevation of char¬ 
acter is vividly represented by our text. The doves 
followed aspiration with elevation; the upward look 
led to the upward flight. Miss Whately makes a 
striking allusion to this in her book. She says of 
the doves: “ It was beautiful to see them rise clean 
and unsoiled, as doves always do, from the dust and 
the dirt in which they had been hidden, and soaring 
aloft in the sky, until nearly lost out of sight by 
the bright sunlit clouds.” What a picture and 
parable of the soul’s elevation to the heavenly 
places in Christ Jesus! The contrasted conditions 
in personal life and character have never been more 
finely set forth. 


THE CONQUEST OF ENVIRONMENT 83 


May I ask is it a very far cry from all this to the 
life that many are living today? Perhaps, indeed, 
you recognize in it a parable of your own experi¬ 
ence in the world. There are many rubbish heaps 
which we are all more or less compelled to go 
amongst, and we have no option but to face them; 
while the broken pitchers and vessels are not far 
fetched symbols of the daily reality of the city and 
its streets. Many find their lot cast among the dust 
and the grime of the pots, but the conquest of en¬ 
vironment may become so real an experience that 
they need not be soiled by this contact. Out of 
such conditions they may soar unsullied on the 
wings of faith and love; out of their surroundings 
they may rise to an elevation of character that is 
best described by doves in their seeking the skies, 
while “ the light that never was on land or sea ” 
glorifies them in their flight. The fact is, no hon¬ 
est business need begrime the soul. The machin¬ 
ist, the mechanic, the artisan, and the laborer, may 
all have grimy work to perform, but by the con¬ 
quest of environment each may be like a dove in 
the personal elevation of character and life. 
There are men today in our coal mines with 
souls like the wings of a dove, as there are men 
in mansions with souls as black with sin as the 
miner’s is with coal dust. As some one has said, 
“ The one has soot on his face, the other has it 
on his soul.” No legitimate calling need be 
sordid, or degrading, but if we are sordid, every- 


84 THE CONQUEST OF ENVIRONMENT 

thing we touch and handle will also become low 
and degraded. 


WEARINESS AND WINGS 

The pity is that life for so many is a life among 
the pots. In a recent issue of the Journal of 
Mental Hygiene there appeared a letter written to 
the editor by a woman reader. She said, “ I wish 
I could find a place where they don’t want things. 
I have heard there is such a place in some Southern 
State, and I believe I will try to find it and go there 
to live. This forever being called on to supply 
some want in the household tires me out, and I’m 
weary all the time.” 

What a pathetic confession! Weariness, with¬ 
out wings! And the almost tragic side of the sub¬ 
ject is, many men and women, like the writer, 
would say, “ We feel that way too.’’ What do all 
such workers need? They need wings. They need 
to stand over their own work. They need to find 
joy in service. They need to conquer their en¬ 
vironment by the elevation of the soul, so that the 
things of the world may be left behind. 

How can this be done? It can be done in one 
of two ways, or perhaps both. 

The first way is by detachment of spirit, which 
is an important lesson to learn in the art of living. 
In the midst of the political raving excitement of 
the French Revolution, and all its effects in Europe, 
there were at least three people who, while not un- 


THE CONQUEST OF ENVIRONMENT 85 


moved by it, were able to detach themselves from it 
when they pleased. These were Coleridge, Words¬ 
worth, and Wordsworth’s sister Dorothy. They 
were all young, but they had learned the art of de¬ 
tachment of mind, by elevation of spirit, and all 
through that trying time they grew in strength and 
beauty of character. 

The other method is by dwelling in the spirit of 
thankfulness on past mercies. I read not long ago 
of a woman who all her married life had kept a 
diary, only writing down the pleasant things which 
came to her day by day; the sad and the painful 
ones she tried to forget. Each year, after middle 
life, she wrote a book of the blessings which came 
to her life, and called the volumes, “ My Pleasure 
Books.” When she became wearied and depressed 
—as we all are at times—she conquered her en¬ 
vironment, and drove away dull care by getting out 
her books and reading from them. The result was 
that her soul, like the doves, rose above the things 
of the world. By detachment of mind and dwell¬ 
ing on life’s blessings, we may find true elevation 
of life and character. 

This means that the wings of the soul are turned 
towards the sun, which alas! is not always true of 
them in life. And yet it is the great glory of man 
that each day there comes to him the opportunity 
of rising from the low and sordid, by the wings of 
the mind. You may remember the bitter memories 
of his mother Charles Dickens had, who left him 


86 THE CONQUEST OF ENVIRONMENT 

as a boy to struggle in the squalid environment of 
East London, and the Lower Thames. In later life 
once speaking to a friend of those early years, he 
said, “ There was nothing in those days but my 
dreams, to keep me from growing up a little vaga¬ 
bond of the streets.” Nothing except his dreams! 
But they were sufficient, for by means of them he 
mastered his environment, while his experiences 
were turned to good account in the elevation of the 
personal and national character of England. 

A gifted lady once was asked to write her great¬ 
est desire in the birthday book of a friend. She 
complied, and this is what she wrote, “ That life 
for me may never lose its halo.” She wanted that 
little touch of the mystical and romantic expressed 
in the old lyric, “ Over the hills and far away.” 
There are tides from the infinite which flow in on 
souls that aspire, souls that seek elevation, souls 
that are prepared to conquer their environment, by 
the power of the life of God. 

Everyone is familiar with the old song, “ O had 
I the wings of a dove! ” But wings are not given 
to fly away with so much as to fly upwards. There 
are many things in life which keep the soul in its 
upward flight, as we have seen, such as detach¬ 
ment, and art, and literature ; but the greatest of all 
is faith, and prayer to God. If there is no touch in 
your life at this moment, no compelling force that 
elevates your life, is it not that you have forgotten 
that God gave you wings ? 


THE CONQUEST OF ENVIRONMENT 87 

The sun is calling you from your dark corner: 
the free air is inviting you to plunge into it, so that 
you may find your true home. The great living 
Christ is waiting to touch your plumage with His 
glory, for He says to you and to me, “ Though ye 
have lain among the pots, yet shall ye be as the 
wings of a dove covered with silver, and her 
feathers with gold.” 

THE LAW OP THE LEAP 

In the conquest of our environment we have the 
thought of transfiguration. Note the gradation of 
thought in our text to this helpful glorious climax: 
—aspiration; elevation; transformation; but the 
greatest of all is transformation. 

How does this transformation take place? Let 
us turn to our text for the answer. It was the 
glory of the sunset, and not anything of their own 
which gave these poor birds the beauty that both 
Psalmist and traveller observed; so the Christ of 
God, the sun of the soul, is central and vital in our 
lives, if they are to be transfigured as they should. 
Christ, the Light of the World, transforms our 
lives, not because He is an ethical teacher; not be¬ 
cause He is a pioneer of thought; not because He is 
a pattern of holiness, but because He is the personal 
Redeemer from the power and the love of sin. 

By what law do we conquer our environment, 
and become transformed into Sons of God? We 
may answer in the words of St. Paul, by The law 


88 THE CONQUEST OF ENVIRONMENT 

of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, which makes us 
free from the law of sin and death.” Transfor¬ 
mation means freedom; it means what scientists 
call the law of the leap . There are illustrations of 
this law on every side. When a certain tempera¬ 
ture is reached ice passes into water, and water into 
steam. Suddenly the caterpillar passes into the 
chrysalis and even more quickly the chrysalis into 
the butterfly. Even the scientific world is ap¬ 
proaching the assurance that new species are sud¬ 
denly formed, and do not always come about by 
long, slow changes of environment. In his recent 
message on the mutation theory, De Vires startled 
the whole scientific world by saying that new 
species are formed by sudden mutations, by spurts, 
or leaps, or bounds, the cause of the appearance of 
which is as yet entirely unknown. 

In the moral and spiritual world we see illustra¬ 
tions of this law all the time. * Take one illustration 
from the realm of literature. In many ways the 
most remarkable religious poem of the nineteenth 
century was, “ The Hound of Heaven,” by Francis 
Thompson. But only a few years before he wrote 
that poem, Francis Thompson was an outcast, a 
waif, a wanderer, a casual labourer on the streets 
of London. He tried the profession of bootblack 
and failed. When he slept it was on the Thames 
embankment, and finally, clad in rags, he held the 
heads of horses, making a few pence daily, which 
he spent on opium as fast as he got them. But 


THE CONQUEST OF ENVIRONMENT 89 


Francis Thompson could not get away from God. 
Christ came to reveal God to him, and to transform 
his wasted life, spent in folly and degradation up 
to that hour. That is how we conquer our environ¬ 
ment through Christ. This is what Christ came to 
earth for, not that we should be conformed to the 
world, but “ transformed, by the renewing of the 
mind, that we may prove what is that good and 
acceptable, and perfect will of God.” 

Turn to the tight 

To be thus transformed by God, we need to turn 
toward the light. There is a charming little book 
written by the late William Frederick Palmer, the 
well known American war correspondent, entitled, 
“ With Our Faces Toward the Light.” It was 
written in the early days of the war, before Amer¬ 
ica entered the conflict. How did Mr. Palmer get 
his title ? Well, one glorious evening in the early 
days of the war, when the sky was still luminous 
with the setting sun, he came upon a battalion of 
British soldiers resting amid the debris on the 
Somme, and looking happy and contented in their 
tasks. Mr. Palmer asked the commanding officer 
why they looked so happy. The reply was very 
significant, “ They have their faces turned towards 
the light.” The British officer then went on to say 
that the “ day would come when America would 
also turn her face towards the light, and join the 
allies in their task.” He explained more fully by 


90 THE CONQUEST OF ENVIRONMENT 

adding, “ The thing which we are about to attack 
tomorrow will drive you into it, for the thing that 
is sending us to the attack is calling you.” And so, 
with faces towards the light, those brave men 
seemed to be transfigured by the glory of a great 
cause, as they reflected the glory of the Western 
Sun. They might lie amid the pots and pans, in 
dug-outs, or trenches, in shell holes, or in any other 
rude shelter, but Frederick Palmer felt that nothing 
could sully the standard of righteousness for which 
they struggled. 

As we look back now at that scene and in imagi¬ 
nation see them transformed by the glory of their 
cause, we also see another transformation that is 
still better. It is the transformation of character 
that comes by looking at the Leader of all good 
causes; the Captain and Commander of our salva¬ 
tion, the Christ of God, who gave His life a sacri¬ 
fice for man in his environment of sin. As we look 
to Him by faith, His Spirit whispers peace to the 
soul; and as we continue looking to Him those 
wonderful words of the great apostle of the Gen¬ 
tiles are realized, “For we all with open face be¬ 
holding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are 
changed (metamorphosed) into the same image, 
from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the 
Lord.” 


VI 


THE MINISTRY OF JOY 

The joy of the Lord is your strength 

—Nehemiah viii: io. 

T HERE is always a close connection between 
Christian joy and Christian strength. In¬ 
deed, given the first, the second is sure to 
follow. This aspect of life is too frequently for¬ 
gotten or overlooked. We are all anxious in these 
days to possess the strong soul, the soul that over¬ 
flows with radiant life to those within the circle of 
its influence. Such souls around us are doing a 
great and noble work for God; a work in its effect 
more far-reaching than the most sanguine among 
us can believe. We long to fathom the mystery, and 
wistfully ask the secret of their strength, that we 
may make our own lives sublime. To all who 
make this inquiry, good old Nehemiah furnishes 
in our text a full and satisfactory reply, “ The 
joy of the Lord is your strength.” Christian 
strength is inseparable from the experience of 
Christian joy. 

The occasion of Nehemiah's first uttering the 
words of our text was one of unusual interest. It 
was a great anniversary following a period of 
gloom. After the lapse of 150 years the people 


91 


92 


THE MINISTRY OF JOY 


assembled to hear the public proclamation of the 
promises made by God to their fathers. Little 
wonder, as Ezra the scribe read from the law, that 
amid such sacred associations the people wept 
aloud, but their sorrow was soon turned into joy. 
Nehemiah, one of the greatest optimists of any age, 
turned the thoughts of the congregation from the 
past to consider the present and the future. lie 
said to them: “ Go your way, eat the fat and drink 
the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom 
nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our 
Lord: neither be ye sorry, for the joy of the Lord 
is your strength.” 


NEED OE JOY 

There is great need for a new ministry of joy at 
the present hour. Pessimism has taken hold of not 
a few in regard to the Church and its work. It has 
been said with truth that the pessimist is a man who 
of two evils chooses both; in other words, he blows 
out the light of the candle to see how dark it is. At 
times we are all to blame for a tendency in this 
direction. We not only take our pleasures sadly, 
but we even allow our religion to become joyless. 
This is one reason why many people fight shy of 
our churches today. They are bored by our for¬ 
mality and weakened by our joylessness. They 
want freshness, uplift, inspiration, but receive only 
dullness, drabness, and monotony. Dr. Frank 
Crane was more than half right when he said re- 


THE MINISTRY OF JOY 


93 


cently that notwithstanding the imposing cere¬ 
monies and rigid decencies of the Church, the 
trouble with the Church is—it is lacking in joy. 
Now what a holiday is to our jaded nerves Christ’s 
religion ought to be to the joyless soul, relief, 
emancipation, and the breaking away from the 
routine of the commonplace. One has recently 
said if he were asked to give a new beatitude to 
the world it would be: “ Blessed are the joy- 
bringers, for theirs is the benediction of God,” 
and he might have added with equal truth that 
all such joy-bringers also receive the benedic¬ 
tion of men. We can win and wear this bene¬ 
diction only when “ The joy of the Lord is our 
strength.” 


DIVINE IN ITS SOURCE 

The ministry of joy is a ministry that is divine 
in its source. It is “ the joy of the Lord.” Let us 
put two or three kindred thoughts together, that 
we may understand the force and inwardness of 
the passage. When we say “ the perfume of the 
rose,” what do we mean? We mean the rich 
fragrance that emanates from the rose. When we 
say “ the light of the sun,” we mean the bright, 
strong cheery ways which have their source in the 
sun. When we say “ the water of the Catskill 
mountains,” we mean the water whose springs are 
found in the famous Catskills. In each instance 
the idea is that of a causative source. So when we 


94 


THE MINISTRY OF JOY 


speak of “ the joy of the Lord ” we mean the joy 
that has its springs in God; the joy that is divine in 
its source. Now this differentiates it from two 
things with which it is frequently confounded— 
mirth and happiness. Mirth is a mere act of the 
personality, but joy is the habit of the soul. Mirth 
is brief and passing, but joy is permanent. Mirth 
is instinctive, like the lambs that frolic in the fields; 
but joy is spiritual and flows from our faith in God. 
It was probably with some such distinction as this 
in his mind that a great modern preacher said he 
was going to teach his people to love God and 
laugh. The difference between joy and mirth, is 
in a word, that joy is deeper because its source is 
divine. 

Then joy is also to be distinguished from happi¬ 
ness, although the words are often confounded. 
This difference is expressed in the words them¬ 
selves, and to get at the root idea of each will help 
us. Happiness is, therefore, according to the origi¬ 
nal meaning of the term, that which comes to one 
by haphazard or some outward circumstances of 
life. But joy literally means, a leap or spring from 
within. It is the bliss not of condition but of char¬ 
acter. The soul is in such sweet harmony with the 
great Over-Soul of the universe—God—that there 
is a constant well-spring of spiritual bliss. God is 
its source, and Christ its center, while the light that 
radiates from within can brighten the darkest night 
of obscurity, adversity, and sorrow. Within re- 


THE MINISTRY OF JOY 


95 


cent years I met with a vivid illustration of this 
distinction while visiting a man in one of our hos¬ 
pitals, who was about to undergo an operation of a 
very serious character. The pain he suffered both 
before and after was intense, for he was highly 
strung. One day, he told me, with tears of joy 
filling his eyes, that while he had no happiness in 
his hours of pain and weakness, yet God had given 
him not merely peace, but overflowing joy. Such a 
testimony enables us to see that the highest joy may 
have pain latent in it. The old hymn is true to our 
deepest experiences:— 

i 

“ I thank Thee more, that all our joy 
Is touched with pain: 

That shadows fall on brightest hours 
That thorns remain: 

That so earth’s bliss may be our guide, 

And not our chain.” 

II 

The ministry of joy is not only divine in its 
source—it is also a ministry of strength and vital¬ 
ity. All joy has something to do with efficiency. 
There is a potency in it that cannot be gainsaid. It 
is man’s prerogative that his force comes from his 
mind rather than his body. Indeed, cheerfulness 
doubles the power of personality. Gloom cogs the 
wheels, but gladness oils the axles, so that the 
chariot moves forward without friction. The old 
song is true, that the sad heart tires with a mile, 


96 


THE MINISTRY OF JOY 


but the glad heart can trudge on. It is the differ¬ 
ence between joy-life and duty-life. 

MUSIC OF ORPHEUS 

The strength of Christian joy may be seen in at 
least two directions. One is, it becomes our 
strength to resist temptation. The joy of the Lord 
is the strength of the Lord, which lifts the soul into 
a large and wealthy place. Quite true, temptation 
is often subtle and bewitching, but in the presence 
of the joy of the Lord temptation loses its power. 
Have you ever heard of the old legend concerning 
the quest of the golden fleece? When the sailors 
on the good ship Argo were on search for the 
golden fleece, they had to pass the isle of the sirens, 
who by their ravishing music sought to lure them 
to the shores of the fatal isle and destroy them. 
But there was one on board named Orpheus, the 
father of song, and the sweetest singer on earth at 
that period of history. He tuned his harp, and 
sang the songs of the heroes of old, and as he sang 
the strains were so sweet and ennobling that all on 
board turned away from the seductions of the 
sirens on the fatal isle. They had more joy in 
listening to the music of Orpheus than to the 
strains of the sirens. So if we only possess the joy 
of the Lord as our strength and inspiration, we 
shall turn from the pleasures of sin, to the nobler 
life in Christ 

Further, the joy of the Lord is our strength for 


97 


THE MINISTRY OF JOY 

Christian service. Nothing else will suffice to sus¬ 
tain us in our work for God. For strength there 
must be hope, gladness, the joy of the Ford. If the 
arm is to smite with vigour it must be at the bid- 
ding of the cheerful soul. Where this joy is lack¬ 
ing there is a deficiency in the depth of our faith, 
arising from a defective view of our position in 
Christ. It is only when we have much faith that 
there is much love, and only when we have much 
love can we have strength in our Christian service 
which flows from joy. If there be but little heat 
around the bulb of the thermometer, little wonder 
that the mercury marks a low degree, and if there 
be but small faith, or a defective view of our in¬ 
heritance .in Christ, there can be only low vitality 
and little joy in our service. It is not an easy mat¬ 
ter to carry on Christian work apart from this joy. 
True, the sense of duty may carry us far for a 
time, but there is a higher stage and a loftier motive 
power which is ours when the joy of the Lord is 
our strength. 

MINISTRY Alylv may shark 
Further, this ministry of joy is cl ministry in 
which all the members of the Christian Church 
may share . Christ’s religion is as the song of the 
nightingale, and the nightingale does not sing to a 
time table: it sings because it must express its own 
music, even though, when the song is ended, it fall 
against the thorn and die. Christ’s religion is as a 


98 


THE MINISTRY OF JOY 


draught of cool water from a wayside spring, and 
not from a water bottle in a railway waiting room, 
with its contents unchanged for a week or two in 
the middle of summer. Christ’s religion is as a 
royal procession that climbs the hills of God in 
sight of the crystal sea. Such a religion as this 
will save us from falling into a groove, for a 
groove means a grave in the Christian life. God’s 
beauty should make us buoyant; God’s sympathy 
should make us social; God’s charity should make 
us cheerful; God’s love should make us light¬ 
hearted; and God’s grace should make us glad 
with a gladness like the joy of Jesus. This great 
ministry of gladness is one in which we all may 
share, when the joy of the Cord has become our 
strength. 

May I ask, is this joy of the Cord our portion? 
The best recipe for sadness in the Christian life is: 
be a half-hearted follower of Christ. If believers 
in Christ would only remember that they are as 
morally bound to be cheerful as to be honest, they 
would cease to unload their nasty moods and un¬ 
pleasant humours on the heads of harmless and 
inoffensive people. 

There are some Christians who have the gift of 
finding joy everywhere and leaving it as a priceless 
legacy wherever they go. Such a man was Charles 
Kingsley. Never did any minister live a more 
devoted Christian life, and never did any one mani¬ 
fest more of the joy of the Cord in his ministry. 


THE MINISTRY OF JOY 


99 


He once said to his wife, “ I wonder is there any 
home in England where there is more joy than in 
our own ? ” And yet it was Kingsley who said, 
“ I simply cannot live without Christ.” 

the joy of harvest 

God wants us to share in the joy of harvest? It 
is the joy of fellowship, the joy of achievement, the 
joy of realized hopes. It is the joy of the Alpine 
climber, who has scaled Mount Blanc, or the mighty 
Matterhorn, and beholds a panorama of beauty 
beyond what language can describe. It is the joy 
of the student who has scorned delights and lived 
laborious days when he sees that his name stands 
high in the honour list, and duly receives recog¬ 
nition for his arduous toil. It is the joy of the 
painter when he beholds his dream transferred to 
canvas, which in after ages will delight and bless 
the world. It is the joy of the poet, to whom “ a 
timely utterance gives the soul relief ” as he sees 
his vision embodied in lines that will thrill human¬ 
ity in years to come. It is the joy of the man of 
letters, when he has completed the last page of the 
book, written with his own heart's blood. It is the 
joy of the statesman when he has succeeded in 
placing on the statute book of his country some 
great and beneficent measure of reform which has 
cost him sleepless nights and toilsome days. It is 
the joy of the minister when he beholds the fields 
he has sown white unto harvest, and feels that 


» 

S J 

. J J 


» * 
> I > 


100 


THE MINISTRY OF JOY 


something worth while has been accomplished in 
co-operation with the members of his church. It 
is a strategic blunder for a minister, who is sour 
and morose, to blame his congregation for not 
supporting him in a more loyal fashion. Each and 
all should do something to banish gloom and weak¬ 
ness from personal and church life, and share in 
this ministry of joy. If truly Christians, we owe 
it to Christ as an ethical, moral, and religious duty 
to be cheerful. Christ did not say “ ye are the 
clouds of the world.” He said “ ye are the light 
of the world.” And our light is to so shine—the 
light of our Christian influence, Christian example, 
and Christian gladness—that others seeing our 
good works may be led to glorify our Father in 
heaven. 

Someone at this point may say with great truth, 
“ My emotions of joy and sorrow are not under 
my own control. I cannot help being glad or sad as 
circumstances may dictate.” Well, I will tell you 
what we all can do, or refrain from doing. We can 
all either stand in the sunlight or stand in the 
shadow. Each one can determine the complexion 
of his Christian life. By your own act you can 
inject into the veins of your moral nature either 
the bright tints of gladness or the dark tints of 
sadness. This is true, even making all necessary 
allowance for the different varieties of tempera¬ 
ment manifested among your fellow men. 

The last prayer of the late R. E. Stevenson was 



THE MINISTRY OF JOY 


101 


a prayer for cheerfulness, offered to God on the 
day before his lamented death in the presence of his 
immediate circle of friends, at family worship, in 
his Samoan home. 

“ The day returns and brings with it the petty round 
of irritating concerns. Help us to play the man. Help 
us to perform our duties with laughter and kind faces. 
Let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go 
blithely on our business each day, and bring us to our 
resting place weary but undishonoured, and grant us in 
the end the gift of sleep.” 

May this gladness be your’s and mine, because 
the joy of the Lord is our strength today and 
forever. 


VII 


THE ETERNAL REFUGE 

" The eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are 
the everlasting arms .”— Deuteronomy xxxiii: 27. 

n HIS immortal saying was the swan-song of 
Moses, and is one of the loftiest utterances 

L. 

of Hebrew literature. It was originally * 
given by Moses to the ancient people of God, in 
order to comfort them on the eve of his departure. 

As he starts from the camp on his long, last 
journey to the crest of Pisgah, we hear him saying 
to the people: “You are not so homeless as you 
think; you stile have a shelter and a friend. The: 
eternal God is thy reeuge, and underneath 
are the everlasting arms/' With these great 
words on His lips He passes from, the companion¬ 
ship of earth to the more august society of God. 

The subject here set forth is the Soul’s Eternal 
Refuge, for doubtless Moses whispered the words 
to his own soul as well as to the people. Singular 
to say, our text is rarely preached from, probably 
because it is so' much richer than anything one can 
say concerning it. 

Though centuries have passed away and gener¬ 
ations come and gone, the sublime music of this 
passage weaves a spell around the spirit that never 




102 



THE ETERNAL REFUGE 


103 


loses its power of appeal. It finds us and expresses 
for us what we desire should find expression in our 
deeper moods of experience— the soui/s eternal 
refuge in God. 

refuge from mystery 

The Eternal God is thy refuge from the insoluble 
mysteries of life. We cannot escape from life’s 
mysteries; they grow with the growth of knowl¬ 
edge, and were never greater than today. The late 
Heinrich Heine, the brilliant German poet, in a 
striking lyric, calls attention to the riddle of life. 
He pictures a youth standing on the seashore, call¬ 
ing to the winds, waves, clouds and stars to solve 
for him the mystery of life, and tell him what there 
is underneath the universe. When he has called, 
and called again, and got no reply, the poet says 
that only a fool will expect an answer to such a 
riddle. 

Well, whether men be fools or not, they have 
always been asking the question, “ What is there 
underneath all the things we see? ” Two answers 
have come to us from antiquity—one mythological 
and the other religious and spiritual. As samples 
of the old mythological answer, we have the well- 
known Hindu legend, that directly under the 
world is an elephant, and underneath the ele¬ 
phant a huge tortoise; while the old Greek legend 
is that underneath the universe is a strong man 
called Atlas, who carries it on his shoulders. In 


104 


THE ETERNAL REFUGE 


this way, mythology would read the riddle of our 
world. 

On the other hand, coming down from the same 
ancient world, we have this startling and sublime 
conception, that the eternal God is man's refuge, 
and underneath are the everlasting arms. This im¬ 
plies that underneath there is an everlasting 
heart OR love, and since arms are the symbol of 
power, we see how God’s embracing arms are the 
emblems of love and power combined, thus all- 
enfolding and all-embracing the little life of man. 

Because of this, the problem of a quiet mind in 
the presence of life’s mysteries resolves itself into 
the question: What is your real conception of God ? 
Have you ever tried to think yourself into God? 
Bacon, the father of inductive philosophy, was 
right when he pointed out that there must be Infi¬ 
nite Mind, antecedent to all phenomena, and that 
no following of sequences can find a final explana¬ 
tion without having recourse to God, even though 
that equivalent of God be but Herbert Spencer’s 
conception of “ an infinite and eternal energy from 
which all things proceed,” it is, and ever must be 
a necessity to all real thought. Bergson’s “ ten¬ 
dency behind phenomena ” is not enough to rest in, 
inasmuch as tendency is only a quality. 

So in our brief transit across the stage of time, 
from eternity to eternity, from God to God, amid 
life’s insoluble mysteries and inexorable laws, 
there falls on the ears of the soul these simple 


THE ETERNAL REFUGE 


105 


but sublime strains of music: “ The eternal God 
is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlast¬ 
ing arms.” 


refuge From ieeusions 

Again: The Eternal God is thy refuge from all 
life’s illusions and adverse conditions. As a rule 
youth knows little of these illusions and adverse 
conditions—little by way of comparison. Few, 
however, reach half the allotted span of life with¬ 
out feeling that their experience is graphically por¬ 
trayed in Scripture: “ Vanity of vanity, saith 
THE PREACHER, AEL IS VANITY." That Outburst 
came from the heart of the one who knew life at 
all points of the compass and found illusion, dis¬ 
appointment and weariness not only a commonplace 
but a reality. 

Now God has at least two ways of leading men 
through the gates of illusion. The first is by refus¬ 
ing our desires in order to show us that we are not 
in accordance with His will, while the second is by 
granting our desires and at the same time sending 
leanness into our souls. 

Now which of the two produces the most bitter 
experiences of the soul, that of the man who yearns 
in vain for the supposed good things of life, but 
who sees them flit over his head like the clouds 
across the distant hills; or that of the man who, 
attaining the end on which he had set his heart, 
finds that his success yields him no happiness, but 


106 


THE ETERNAL REFUGE 


like an apple of Sodom, turns to dust and ashes to 
his taste. 

Thus men labour for wealth and find that they 
were happier in poverty; and seek fame in freedom 
from adverse conditions, only to find fame less 
tolerable than their previous obscurity. 

There is, however, yet another way by which 
God leads men and women through illusion and 
weariness in the complex conditions of modern life. 
It is by bringing home to the soul this old message: 
“ The eternal God is thy refuge, and under¬ 
neath ARE THE EVERLASTING ARMS/’ It is Well to 
remember this today amid our social and political 
troubles, not forgetting the troubles of the Church 
of God itself. We greatly err if we imagine that 
our plans and purposes are upholding the world; 
they are not, but rather the mighty arms of God are 
upholding it. 

Our refuge in times of distress is not in parlia¬ 
ments, governments, congresses, senates and com¬ 
promising politicians, but in the eternal God. 

THE COMFORT OF A PERFECT TRUST 

The same principle is true in personal life. 

It is possible to realize God’s refuge and enfold¬ 
ing arms under the most adverse conditions and 
circumstances. An heroic lady missionary recently 
published a little volume entitled “ A Life for God 
in India,” in which she tells how this truth came 
home to her when in the hot season the Hindu wed- 


THE ETERNAL REFUGE 107 

ding ceremonies, with their interminable hubbub, 
had tried her almost past endurance. Her courage 
at length failed as a certain procession passed her 
door. The drumming all seemed to be on the top 
of her head, and she felt that it was impossible 
to endure days of it. Something seemed to say to 
her, “ You must get away from here.” 

Then came the suggestion, “ Do not go away 
from here; these are God's circumstances.” 

Her faith turned God ward through Christ, when 
in upon her soul was borne the message, “ the 
eternal God is the reeuge, and underneath 
are the everlasting arms.” She did then, she 
says, what she should have done at first—she let 
go her fear of adverse conditions and just rested in 
the everlasting arms. 

refuge Erom limitations 

Further: The eternal God is thy refuge from all 
human limitations and the sense of insignificance. 
These two are usually linked together in life. All 
down the ages the limitations of human nature have 
tried to hold the Church and the world back from 
progress. Men through obscurantism have threat¬ 
ened, unchurched and excommunicated the thinkers 
who have been in advance of their time. When 
Savonarola had brought all Florence to its knees 
before God the Pope's Legate approached the splen¬ 
did reformer and saint, saying: “I cut thee off 
from the Church militant and the Church tri- 


108 THE ETERNAL REFUGE 

umphant.” The brave martyr replied, “ From the 
Church militant you may, but from the Church 
triumphant, never.” 

Savonarola appealed to the Supreme Court 
above, a Court in which, thank God, human limita¬ 
tions have no locus standi. He appealed from the 
despotism of authority to deep, unfathomable love 
of the Infinite Mind and Heart. His thought 
would have been, and must have been, “ The: 
eternal God is thy reeuge, and underneath 
are the Everlasting arms.” “ What matters it 
though the Council of Florence condemn me to the 
flames ? The flames can only destroy my body, but 
my real self will be unharmed.” 

And what applies to our human limitations is 
equally true of our sense of insignificance The 
other day I noticed in the papers with regret that 
Khama, the great and good Bechuana chief, had 
passed away. The account of his death brought 
back to my mind vividly his visit to Britain, in 
order to plead the cause of his people. When he 
returned to his own country, having his petition 
granted and the demon of drink restricted within 
his dominion, he tried to tell his people something 
of what he had seen of the splendour of London 
and of his interview with the great queen-mother, 
the late Queen Victoria. In the course of his ad¬ 
dress to these simple people of primitive life he 
paused and said: “ I have no words, you have no 
words, to express what I have seen. Our country 


THE ETERNAL REFUGE 109 

is small compared to the bigness of the British 
Empire, but I will have to think of words before I 
can make you understand the greatness of the 
mighty England, in whose arms we rest.” 

Now, Bechuanaland, lying in the arms of the 
British Empire, is a figure of your life and mine, 
so small and insignificant, lying in the arms of 
God. Remember if the arms of God be around us, 
then He Himself is near. 

GOD EVERYWHERE 

The eternal God is thy refuge from the sense of 
sin and of loneliness. It may be the guilt of past 
sin, or the power of present sin, or the shadow of 
sin’s former pollution; God in Christ is thy Refuge 
from all. It was to undo sin’s burden that the 
eternal God sent the eternal Son. You and I have 
voluntarily yielded to sin, and so given an advan¬ 
tage to the powers of evil, but even so we may fly 
to Christ for succor, and so prove that the eternal 
God is our refuge from sin’s pollution and power. 
The surest and safest refuge for all sinners is in 
Christ. “ Blessed is the man whose iniquities are 
forgiven and whose sin is covered.” 

Donald Hankey in one immortal chapter gives us 
a glimpse of war experience, possibly his own, 
which takes us right into the heart of things. He 
introduces us to a soldier, wounded on the field of 
battle. He has been unconscious for an hour or so, 
but when he woke after the struggle he had a sense 


110 


THE ETERNAL REFUGE 


of unspeakable isolation and loneliness, as if he had 
been cast on some desert island. Eternity and in¬ 
finity seemed to him to be pitiless. The stars looked 
down on him coldly, which only made him feel 
more lonely still. Yet, after all, he had one ad¬ 
vantage over the stars; he could feel pain and 
suffering, for he had only to move to verify that. 
At last he was aware of his existence, and his sense 
of solitude became oppressive. Softly he whis¬ 
pered, “ God! God everywhere! ” Then into his 
tired brain there came a new phrase, “ Underneath 
are the everlasting arms.” He sighed contentedly 
as a tired child; all his sense of loneliness disap¬ 
peared, while the phrase went on repeating itself in 
his brain as a kind of a chant: “ Underneath are 
the everlasting arms.” The moon went down be¬ 
hind the horizon and darkness set in, but they 
fetched him back to the ambulance station at last. 

“ He will never again,” said Donald Hankey, 
“ be sound of limb, but there is in his memory and 
in his heart that which may make him a staunch 
fighter on other fields. He had learned a new way 
of prayer, and the courage that is born of faith 
well founded.” 

Such an experience was surely worth all it cost. 

THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

There is little need to add that the eternal God 
will be thy refuge in that great adventure, when we 
pass from this life unto His immediate presence. 


THE ETERNAL REFUGE 111 

Then, every mask of hypocrisy shall be at last 
torn away; then we shall see ourselves as we are 
seen of God. 

In his last days on earth, James Russell Lowell 
used to say: “ I find great comfort in God.” So 
may all who truly turn to Him through the cross 
of Christ. 

When that knightly soul, Charles Kingsley, lay 
dying in one room, and his wife so dangerously ill 
in another that she was not expected to recover— 
their first separation in a married life of unclouded 
love and confidence—she sent him a message one 
day to ask if he considered it cowardly for her to 
tremble before the mystery of the unknown world. 
He sent back the reply: “ Not cowardly; but re¬ 
member, it is not darkness we are going to, for 
God is uight ; not loneliness, for Christ is 
with us.” 

Some years ago there passed from earth one of 
my dearest friends, and one whose unselfish life 
could ill be spared. Shortly before the end, the 
clergyman who stood by his side asked him: Have 
you any fear of death?” His reply was: “ Why 
should I fear, when beneath me are the everlasting 
arms?” He knew that the eternal refuge would 

not fail. 

The eternal God is thy refuge, from the sense of 
sin, the sense of loneliness and the fear of the 
change we call death . May I ask you to join with 
me in saying: 

“ Other refuge have I none, 

Hangs my helpless soul on Thee.” 


VIII 


DON’T WORRY 

“ Fret not thyself because of evil-doers, neither be 
thou envious against the workers of iniquity.” 

—Psalm xxxvii: i. 

T HIS precept of the Psalmist is directed 
against the sin of worry. It is one of the 
most prevalent and pernicious sins of mod¬ 
ern life, and it is never out of place to dwell on it, 
in the average congregation, whether in the city or 
in the rural parts. Indeed, the man who can pro¬ 
vide a remedy against worry is nothing less than a 
benefactor to the race. Ministers are sometimes 
affected by its as well as their people, and it always 
does them more harm than hard work. 

And yet, if ever fretfulness were justified, it 
were surely justified under the circumstances por¬ 
trayed in this psalm. What is the situation de¬ 
picted? It is one where evil doers were moving 
about, clothed in purple and fine linen every day. 
It was a period in the Psalmist’s history when 
workers of iniquity were climbing into positions 
of great power, and tyrannizing it over their less 
fortunate brethren. It was a time when sinful men 
and women were stalking and strutting through the 
land, basking in the great prosperity of ill-gotten 


112 


DON’T WORRY 


113 


gains. The sight of it affected the Psalmist very 
much: his spirit was perturbed, and he was in grave 
peril of giving way to fretfulness. It was at this 
time there came to him the message of God: “ Fret 
not thyself because of evil-doers; neither be thou 
envious against the workers of iniquity.” 

the: e:thics or worry 

What is meant by this precept: “Fret not thy¬ 
self”? The meaning is: “Worry not thyself.” 
In other words: “ Don’t get unduly excited, or 
heated, but keep yourself cool! ” Even in a good 
cause, worry does not help but hinders. It is no 
help to the train for the axles to get hot. I was 
looking at a train recently, while waiting at a 
junction for my own, a train whose axles had got 
hot, and the heat delayed this train for hours. So 
that the best contribution that the axles can make 
to the progress of the train is to keep cool, and 
avoid all friction. Now fretfulness is just the 
heating of the axles: it is heat in the wrong place. 
And it is surely not without significance that this 
word “ fret ” is closely allied to the word friction. 
It indicates that something is wrong in the machin¬ 
ery of life: that there is an absence of that Divine 
grace, which when in evidence makes the wheels 
of life move smoothly. 

The subject suggested may be designated: Don’t 
Worry. It is a very practical one, and yet, how 
rarely has anyone the courage and the kindness to 


114 


DON’T WORRY 


speak directly to another on the theme. The opin¬ 
ion was freely expressed the other day by a young 
lady who had been long exasperated, and worn out 
by the brooding fears of a relative, when she said 
that in her judgment the sin of giving way to worry 
was as bad as giving way to the sin of swearing! 
The ethics of worry is a difficult and delicate ques¬ 
tion, but I am inclined to agree with the view of 
this girl. At any rate, all will agree with the late 
Henry Ward Beecher when he said that “ it makes 
a great difference to a man’s comfort, and general 
health, whether he dandles his worries and sorrows 
on his knees or spanks them and puts them to bed.” 
The latter is the proper course to pursue. 

Who does not know the unhappy experience of 
starting out on what might be a pleasant holiday, 
were it not for the beloved worrier? This person 
is always expressing dread lest the boat goes down, 
or the cars collide, or that you are sitting in a 
draught, or that a thunderstorm is going to strike 
the party. Between the blue sky, the dashing 
waves, the perfume of flowers, and the vision of 
glorious distances, the little underwail will obtrude 
itself, a veritable drop of gall, in the honey of all 
the pleasures of life. And the worst of it all is 
that the worrier always supposes that this fretful¬ 
ness is the proof sign of peculiar devotion. It is 
actually offered as an evidence of affection, and 
many have to accept it as such, although they know 
well that the coin is counterfeit; for though true 


DON’T WORRY 


115 


love may be anxious, it never worries; it may feel, 
but it never frets. 

the: dogs of worry 

Let us not be too severe on the man or woman 
who gives way to worry. Into our own lives worry 
finds its way, and it is of interest to know that at 
the bottom of the word “ worry ” is the idea of 
chase and capture. A gloomy writer once said: “ I 
am hunted by hounds in the night season/’ Such 
dogs are the dogs not of war, but of worry, and 
when once they fix their fangs in you, it is not an 
easy task to shake them off. 

Sometimes we are pursued by worry in other 
forms. When Florence Nightingale was on her 
way to the Crimea, she tells us that she heard from 
the sailors a weird story about birds with black 
wings and blue breasts, that flew across the Black 
Sea during stormy weather, and which sometimes 
perched on the masts, but had never been caught. 
On dark nights they went to the Mohammedan 
graveyards, roosted on the boughs of cypress trees, 
and mingled their doleful notes with the sighing of 
the winds. The Moslems declared that the spirits 
of the wicked dead dwelt in these birds, and that 
their plaintive notes were the wailings of the lost. 
Be that as it may into the most of our lives there 
come at times birds with black wings, and blue 
breasts. We are heavy-hearted, and have the 
blues, a state of mind which Shakespeare would 


116 


DON’T WORRY 


describe as “ the dumps so dull and heavy.” And 
the strange thing is that some people never seem so 
happy as when they are miserable! They love to 
look on the dark side of things: they prefer to gaze 
at the cloud, not at the rainbow. They peer into 
the darkness, not up at the stars, and generally the 
eye sees what it brings. 

Dr. Frank Crane, the well known writer, in one 
of his volumes of essays, tells us of such a person 
known to him in his boyhood. She lived in a cot¬ 
tage at the back of his home, a large thick woman, 
who enjoyed several incurable maladies. Accord¬ 
ing to Dr. Crane, her “ presence was a funeral.” 
She ate food only to have it disagree with her, and 
breathed only for the purpose of irritating her 
bronchial tubes. She expected to die every night 
she went to bed, but may be living still for all Dr. 
Crane knows. She belonged to the church of which 
his father was the minister, but only assimilated 
such portions of religion as had to do with the 
“ Day of Wrath, and the sudden and terrible judg¬ 
ments of God.” The author suggests a fitting 
epitaph for all such persons who make life a burden 
to themselves and others would be the words: 
“ What’s the Use? ” 

CAUSES OE WORRY 

What are the causes of this worry? They are 
manifold, and at this stage of our subject let us 
consider a few of them. Before doing so, how- 


DON’T WORRY 


117 


ever, it is essential to draw a distinction between 
worry and anxiety. Well-grounded anxiety is not 
worry. Worry means evil in anticipation, and a 
tendency to magnify present troubles and annoy¬ 
ances. It means to exaggerate trifles as light as air 
into things that are of great weight, and impor¬ 
tance. The most usual cause of worry is undue 
forecasting and solicitude for the future. Of 
course there ought to be some reasonable provision 
for the future, if we can at all make it: provision 
for the needs of old age, and for those dependent 
on us, but worry cannot do so. When we do our 
best we need not fret over it. The late Bishop 
Creighton, of Condon, once said to his wife, a few 
years after his appointment: “ Bishop Temple oc¬ 
cupied the See of London until he was seventy- 
eight: how can I face twenty years more of this 
work ? ” He was crossing the stream before he 
came to it: he died at fifty-three, that critical 
year for so many prominent ministers in all the 
churches. Many of us will doubtless be free from 
care long before seventy-eight, or even fifty-three, 
so that it is good advice to take short views of life. 

Some people are constitutionally disposed to 
worry. It is almost as natural for them to fret as 
it is to have fair hair. When that is the case, we 
must not be too hard on the offender, nor must the 
offender be too hard on himself. Thomas Carlyle 
was one of this type. When he lived in London 
he had a neighbour who possessed an interesting 


118 


DON’T WORRY 


coop of chickens whose male member disturbed 
Carlyle’s slumbers by his loud crowing. He ex¬ 
postulated with the owner of the fowl, but the 
owner replied that there ought not to be any com¬ 
plaint, as “ the rooster crew but three or four times 
during the night.” Carlyle said in reply: “That 
may be, but if you only knew what I suffer waiting 
for him to crow! ” This incident throws light on 
the constitutional tendency of Carlyle to worry, and 
also explains to us his attitude to his wife under 
certain circumstances. On one occasion he was at 
work in the attic, while Mrs. Carlyle sat a few 
yards away, busy with her knitting. Carlyle 
snapped out: “Jane—stop that knitting: the click 
of the needles dissipates my powers of concentra¬ 
tion.” His wife meekly obeyed, when in a few 
minutes Carlyle called out again: “Jane—your 
breathing disturbs me, as I can hear you draw 
every breath: better go down stairs.” At this stage 
his wife withdrew in silence. Genius is no joke, 
especially when allied with a nervous temperament 
like that possessed by Carlyle. It was not that he 
did not love his wife, and prize her companionship, 
for she also had genius, second only to his own, and 
after her death there is scarcely anything more 
pathetic in modern literature than his mourning for 
her. Carlyle was like Bishop Creighton—given to 
worry, and in both cases it arose in large measure 
from natural or constitutional disposition. 

On the other hand, just as no man would con- 


DON’T WORRY 


119 


tinue to bear any mark of physical deformity—if it 
were possible to have it removed—so neither should 
any man tamely submit to a mental or moral defect 
because he has a natural tendency in that direction. 
Rather should he manifest that true concern which 
seeks to keep him back with bit and bridle from 
making himself a boor to his dearest friends. No 
man, who has a spark of manhood, would submit 
to be controlled by kleptomania, which I suppose is 
really a disease with some people. Why then 
should he submit to the folly of fretfulness, even 
though it be something which has come to him by 
inheritance ? 


REACTION AFTER WORK 

Sometimes worry arises from physical weari¬ 
ness, after the strain of prolonged work. There is 
no doubt whatever but that worry is produced by 
shattered nerves, and overwrought brains, which 
have consumed all the surplus nervous energy. 
This not infrequently follows brain workers, after 
a period of prolonged toil, mingled with trouble: it 
is the reaction after prolonged strain. A few years 
ago a brilliant young London journalist waited on 
a physician in his city, suffering from general de¬ 
pression, and fretfulness, and exhaustion. After a 
careful examination the kindly doctor said to him: 
“ there is really nothing organically wrong with 
you except worry from overwork. If you were my 
son I’d start you tonight for the South Seas, and 


120 


DON’T WORRY 


failing that, to some outlandish village; and I’d 
stop all your allowances if I heard you were doing 
anything but laugh and idle around for the next 
month or two. A little bit of judicious loafing is 
all you want to make you as well as ever.” He took 
the doctor’s suggestion, and returned in a month or 
two perfectly restored. 

The man who gives way to worry can never be 
his best. In the middle years of the past century a 
young fellow entered for a medical examination on 
which he thought his future depended. He had 
overworked himself, and became nervous, in wor¬ 
rying over his possible failure. Sure enough he did 
fail, and failed miserably, but he had the good 
sense to pull himself together after a little respite 
and say: “ Never mind; what is the next thing to 
be done? ” And he turned to the next thing with 
all his might, but ever taking good care of his phys¬ 
ical health. Dong years afterwards, when he had 
become on of the great scientists of the age, Huxley 
looked back upon this first defeat as one of the best 
lessons he ever learned. Writing of it he said: “ It 
does not matter how many tumbles you have in life, 
so long as you do not get dirty when you tumble. 
It is only the people who 1 have to stop and be 
washed who must lose the race.” 

Huxley was right, and frequently I have felt 
these words to be a veritable tonic. There is no 
real failure for a man except he fall into impurity 
and wrong. Some apparent defeats, owing to de- 


DON’T WORRY 


121 


fective health, are in reality glorious triumphs. If 
we have to tumble, let us tumble in a clean way. 
If we have to suffer temporary defeat in the race of 
life, let us ever keep our garments white. 

MORBID IMAGINATION 

Sometimes worry arises from an over-heated or 
morbid imagination. Perhaps you are disposed to 
question this view, but I think on a moment’s con¬ 
sideration we shall see that it is sober truth. As a 
general rule worry is more frequently produced by 
what is feared than by what is actually suffered: 
by what the imagination borrows from the future, 
rather than by what the mind and body endures at 
the present hour. 

In proof of this let me remind you of the experi¬ 
ences of an American gentleman, whose summer 
home is among the mountains, but who for a long 
time had a dread of the sudden storms of the holi¬ 
day season. In looking back over his many vaca¬ 
tions the thing that impressed him most about the 
summer storms is, that every storm that really 
materialized in his district, there were at least ten 
or a dozen that came within the horizon, made their 
threats in a menacing fashion, and then vanished 
away into air, without ever having touched his 
mountain. It is very much like that in life. A 
great many of the useless worries of life are from 
the storms that never come. Some people have 
great foresight for these storms that they can see 


122 


DON’T WORRY 


in the future, but which are mainly in the heated 
or morbid imagination of those who dwell unduly 
on this particular side of life. 

There is a story told of a lady who for a time 
kept a list of impending troubles: it was a real 
relief to her to see them down in black and white. 
Some months later, in looking over the list, she was 
surprised to find the nine-tenths of them had only 
been in her imagination. These troubles that never 
come form the heaviest part of our load. The 
actual sorrows when they come have their comfort 
and cure, but what cure can there be for the trou¬ 
bles that never come? They are only haunting 
phantoms, unsubstantial as mist, and lighter than 
the air. Little wonder that Shakespeare said: 
“ Each substance of grief hath twenty shadows, 
which show like grief itself, but are not so.” In 
another part of his writings—the Drama of Ham¬ 
let—he also says: “ There is nothing either good 
or bad, but thinking makes it so.” That immortal 
line shows us that Shakespeare has really touched 
the heights and depths of all philosophies. Of 
course, it is not literally true: there are some things 
always bad in themselves, and others good, but 
there is more truth in it than most of us are aware, 
and the truth in it accounts for our trying to cross 
the bridge before we come to it. 

There is a little poem which may help to fasten 
the truth of this part of our subject in our minds, 
if I quote one verse of it. Here it is:— 


DON’T WORRY 


123 


“ There is many a sorrow and pain, I know 
As we tread the path of life; 

There is many a grief of lasting woe, 

And the way is toil and strife: 

But the hardest load we have to bear, 

Is the labour and strength that’s lost 
In building the bridge, with toilsome care, 

O’er the stream that is never crossed.” 

chief CAUSE oe worry 

Perhaps the main cause of worry is the spirit of 
envy which the Pslamist refers to in the latter part 
of our text. It is not put here as an irrelevance, 
but as a prolific reason for the spirit of fretfulness. 

Now envy is akin to covetousness, but there is a 
difference. Covetousness is for property: envy is 
of persons. Covetousness is the wish to possess: 
envy is the wish to dispossess. Covetousness is the 
desire to win: Envy is the desire that another 
should lose. But my brother, my sister, if you can¬ 
not go to the top of the tree yourself, don’t try to 
shake your neighbour down, and then fret if you 
fail. How rarely do we meet a man or woman who 
really rejoices in another’s advancement! Envy is 
one of the common and crying sins of our time, 
and few have grace enough to be ashamed of it. 

The Psalmist’s temptation here was to envy the 
prosperity of the wicked. This led him, as we have 
seen, to fretfulness, and the peril of fretfulness is 
great when looked at from this particular point of 
view. It springs from the spirit of envy, and envy 
in the days of Dante was regarded as one of the 


124 


DON’T WORRY 


seven deadly sins. To this day it remains as one of 
the most loathsome and hateful heads of the great 
hydra of selfishness. Few sins cause more misery 
to the sinner himself, and hardly any sin is so es¬ 
sentially base and contemptible. It is a slow gnaw¬ 
ing pain, a secret misery at the sight of another’s 
good. You grudge him his happiness. You can¬ 
not bear to 1 see him more successful or more richly 
blessed than you are. You impeach Providence 
for permitting anything so palpably unfair. The 
man whom you envy has done you no wrong; he 
may be unconscious of your existence. But you 
cannot bear to see him so far in front. You are 
galled, and chaffed, and become irritable, and fret¬ 
ful, until worry works its course, in hardening, and 
embittering your whole nature. 

cure eor worry 

What, then, is the cure for worryf Well! we 
are not left in doubt. The Psalmist gives us a 
two-fold prescription, that always produces true 
tranquility. This open secret is revealed in the 
context, where we read: “ Trust in the Lord and 
do good.” “ Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently 
for Him ”; such is the antidote prescribed, and it 
has never been known to fail. 

Take the first direction: “ Trust in the Lord, and 
do good.” In this formula we have set before us 
what ought to be our attitude to both the unknown 
and the known. It calls us to faith in God, and in 


DON’T WORRY 


125 


these days of religious confusion and questioning 
it is a great thing to get back to a confession of 
faith such as this one is. It is the secret of true 
tranquility, and covers everything essential in relig¬ 
ion. The great problem before each of us is not to 
resolve all the riddles of the universe, but to live 
simply and bravely our own lives. For this we need 
assurance, and it is found here: “ Trust in the Lord, 
and do good: so shalt thou dwell in the land, and 
verily thou shalt be fed.” Then “ fear not, faint 
not, fret, not: God knows, God cares, God loves.” 

The closing direction is: “ Rest in the Lord , and 
wait patiently for Him.” This completes the cure. 
The meaning of the phrase: “ Rest in the Lord,” 
is literally: “ Be careless in the Lord ”: and I re¬ 
member seeing, some time ago, a perfect illustra¬ 
tion of its meaning. I was playing a game of 
garden croquet with the older members of my 
host's family, and we were finishing the game as he 
came in through the gate, and caught up in his 
arms his youngest daughter, a bright little girl of 
three or four years of age. In mock seriousness 
he said to her: “ Shall I throw you over the wall ? ” 
Her reply was: “If you like, father.” She was 
perfectly careless in her father’s arms, for her 
father did not like to hurt her, but the confidence 
of that little child suggested this subject to my 
mind so vividly that, as Wordsworth once said of 
his poetry: “ A timely utterance gives the soul re¬ 
lief ” : hence my message today. 


126 


DON’T WORRY 


PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

What is your attitude to this life that is careless 
in God? Are you saying to yourself: “ Such an 
experience is beyond me”? You are mistaken in 
this view, and the sooner you discover your error 
the better will it be for you, and your family, your 
business; your church, and the world. 

Some years ago a man who had passed through 
unusual tribulation in his home and business affairs 
went to an eminent physician for advice. He was 
far from well, and the doctor gave him a most 
minute examination. “ Now,” said the specialist, 
after he had diagnosed his condition, “ there is only 
one medicine that will benefit you. It is not ex¬ 
pensive, but it is of the utmost importance that you 
should take it regularly. There is no necessity for 
me to write out the prescription. It is simply this : 
“ Don’t worry! ” 

Simply this! The specialist had set his patient 
the hardest task of his life. However, he paid his 
fee, went home, and determined to give the pre¬ 
scription a trial. He was a sensible man, and fully 
recognized the fact, which was sustained by psy¬ 
chology, that every time he turned his mind in the 
direction of certain things, over which he had no 
control, his system began to manufacture a virulent 
poison. The result was that he worked out a plain, 
common sense philosophy of life, and when his 
thoughts turned in the direction of attempting to 
solve problems which his reason told him were be- 


DON’T WORRY 


127 


yond his finite mind, or when his thoughts would 
turn towards his old trouble, he repeated to him¬ 
self over and over again: “This is God’s world, 
not mine! ” The result was all that could be de¬ 
sired. As Professor William James once put it: 
“ The sovereign balm for worry is religion.” 

From all this it is clear that we fashion our own 
life by our thought, our faith, our religion. Worry 
brings weakness into life, but real religion binds 
the soul to God, and so brings strength. Worry, if 
allowed to work unchecked, will destroy our faith, 
and disturb our poise of character. There is an old 
Japanese parable which tells of a man who was 
cruelly tortured by a demon. The man felt that he 
had never done anything to merit such punishment, 
and so he called on the demon to explain to him 
why he was so persistent in persecution? The 
demon replied: “Thou thyself hast created and 
fashioned me to be such as I am. Blame none but 
thyself for thy sufferings.” So do we fashion 
from our own life the demons of fear, and envy, 
and worry, which torture us: and so frequently 
wreck our happiness. Only faith in the ever pres¬ 
ent, but unseen, Father through Christ, can give us 
the confidence that will conquer worry, and the 
calm abiding conviction that this world is God’s 
world. Then: 

“Never you worry, never you fret; 

God is not done with our old world yet.” 


IX 


THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS 

“ Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us.” 

—Psalm xc: i y . 

T HE relation between beauty and religion is 
very intimate, and has scarcely received suf¬ 
ficient attention. There are many reasons 
to account for this condition of things. Perhaps 
the heritage of our Puritan ancestry is the most 
potent and subtle to be reckoned with, still, all the 
more so because we are so frequently unconscious 
of its sway. Our Puritan forefathers had scant 
respect for the relation of beauty to religion, and 
looking back to those stirring times we can sympa¬ 
thize with their motives, without being influenced 
by their arguments. To them the ministry of 
beauty was a snare that had to be put aside with 
other besetments. 

And yet the ministry of beauty finds recognition 
in the Word of God. Quite true, the term itself is 
rarely found in either the Old Testament or New 
Testament Scriptures. On the other hand in Greek 
literature the word meets you continually. The 
Greeks were emphatically the people of beauty 
among the earlier civilizations. They embodied it 
in their various forms of art,—in poetry, in elo- 


128 


THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS 129 

quence, in painting and architecture, in dress, and 
language, while their sculpture is still the wonder 
of the world. 

In striking contrast to all this, the Hebrews can 
scarcely be said to have had any art at all; at any 
rate, they never attained the rank of an artistic 
race, such as the ancient Greeks, or the modern 
Japanese. This fact has led to countless discus¬ 
sions on the comparative influence on the world of 
Greece and Israel. It is a fascinating subject, and 
capable of more than one interpretation. But this 
at least may be said, that there is nothing more 
characteristic of the difference between the two 
nations, than their conceptions of sin, of holiness 
and of beauty. To the Greek, his sins were simply 
shortcomings, or literally “ bad shots.” On the 
other hand, the Hebrew with his frailties was 
haunted by the sense of sin, and of his responsibil¬ 
ity to a holy God. The Greek worshipped beauty. 
The fragments of her temples still remain to prove 
it, while her statues still illumine and adorn the 
world. As for the Hebrew, he also had an idea of 
beauty, but a totally different one to that of the 
Greek. Indeed, if it were not found in the 
Bible, it would be called daring and perilous in 
its originality. That idea finds expression in our 
text today under a two-fold proposition, which 
has been stated by Dr. James Stalker with un¬ 
usual force. The first part of it is that “ God is 
the beautiful God ”—the next follows as a se- 


130 


THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS 


quence, viz., that “the Divine beauty may be 
imparted to man.” Both these views find expres¬ 
sion in our text today. “ Let the beauty of the 
Lord our God be upon us ”; so that the relation 
between beauty and religion is recognized by the 
Word of God. 

GOD-THE SOURCE OE ADD BEAUTY 

The ministry of beauty finds expression not only 
in the Word of God but also in the World of 
Nature. It is seen in the sunrise, and in the sun¬ 
set; in the starlight, and the rainbow; in the lumi¬ 
nous organs of the fire-fly, and the majestic 
movements of the eagle and the swan; in the tints 
of the wayside flower, and the lustre of the curious 
shell. The old word of Scripture is true: “God 
hath made everything beautiful in its time.” By 
means of this beauty man is helped to realize his 
relationship to God, and the highest life. This was 
unconsciously revealed recently by a lady to her 
minister, who said to him: “ I was a Christian 
once for two weeks. It was while I was in the 
Yosemite. There my heart was continually crying 
out: ‘ The Lord is in His holy temple.’ ” The 
beauty of her surroundings had helped her to real¬ 
ize her relationship to the Eternal Beauty. Well 
might Thomas Curtis Clark say in his little gem of 
a poem entitled, “ Apocalypse ”: 

There’s enough of God 

In the heart of a rose. 


THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS 


131 


In the smile of a child, 

In the dewy blossom of dawn, 

To prove 

That Beauty is the Soul of Him, 

That Love is His Sceptre, 

And that all things created by Him 
Face not the night. 

But an eternal morning. 

From all this it is evident that God is the source 
of all beauty wherever found. “From Him, all 
things sweet derive their sweetness; all things fair, 
their beauty; all things bright, their splendour; and 
all things that live their life.” On the face of 
heaven and earth the Divine handiwork may be seen 
in a thousand forms. From whence does it all 
come ? It is ever flowing out of the depths of the 
Divine Nature, where is hidden the reservoir of all 
loveliness. The only way to really enjoy this great 
and beautiful world is to see it as an expression of 
the Thought of God. Indeed every line of beauty 
is an expression of the Divine Mind. 

The evidence of this truth has sometimes been 
startling. For instance, early in the past century a 
designer for a calico printer sketched a pattern 
which became exceedingly popular. Dresses bear¬ 
ing that design were worn by the ladies of the day. 
One afternoon Hugh Miller, the geologist, was 
searching the rocks for some fossils, alighted on 
one which he split open and polished. When the 
stone-picture came out his keen eyes saw that the 
calico printer had been anticipated. Once more it 


182 


THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS 


became manifest that the design was not new, but 
old, traced by the original Worker—God, who sits 
on the Throne of the Universe. The mark of 
Greece is modern. I doubt if it is possible to draw 
any design that is not already existing in some 
natural form of beauty. 

To define beauty aright is impossible. It is too 
subtle, too illusive, to imprison within a definition. 
Shakespeare reminds us of this difficulty when he 
says that: 

“ Beauty’s princely majesty 
Is such, it confounds the tongue.” 

The greatest painters have failed to trace its deli¬ 
cate lines, and form; indeed every attempt to re¬ 
produce it on canvas only serves to illustrate Lord 
Bacon’s remark that: “ The best part of beauty is 
that which a picture cannot express.” It would 
seem to be impossible to define beauty as to paint 
the likeness of a human soul. But while beauty 
cannot be defined, it may be divined, and better 
still desired so intensely that sooner or later it 
bursts into expression. 

This is especially true of the beauty set before 
us in our text today. Do you ask what is the 
beauty here desired? Why should the Psalmist 
pray for it to descend upon him? The answer is 
that the beauty here prayed for is the beauty of 
holiness, and that the writer felt his need of this 
gift. Amongst the ancient Greeks, beauty was 


THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS 


133 


supposed to be the gift of the gods to their own 
peculiar favourites, which accounted for these 
favourites possessing the charm of healthy youth; 
but our God is not a God of caprice; He is no re¬ 
specter of persons, so that all may look for His 
choicest gifts. It is this fact that encourages us to 
expect from Him the beauty of holiness as we 
present to Him the prayer of this passage: “Let 
the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us ”; the 
beauty of a life that is fair in the eyes of God, 
because His spirit has transformed our deformity 
and sin. 


BEAUTY IN WORSHIP 

The beauty of holiness should find expression in 
our worship. In a kindred passage we are told to 
“ Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,” a 
command needed to be remembered by us all. 
Beauty kindles adoration. When the soul is 
aroused and quickened it sees—as did the Psalmist 
—that everything within it is beautiful and sings 
His praise. Fiona Macleod, that strange genius 
of duplex personality and mystical outlook on life, 
but with a soul ever sensitive to the loveliness of 
this old world, has said that beauty “ is the most 
unforgettable thing in the world, and though of it 
a few perish and the myriad die unknowing and un¬ 
caring, yet beneath it the nations of men move as 
beneath their pilgrim star. Therefore, he who adds 
to the beauty of the world is of the sons of God.” 


134 


THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS 


Side by side with Fiona Macleod may be placed 
the fine saying of Hooker: “ God hath nowhere in 
His world revealed that He loves to dwell on earth 
in ugliness.” 

The Eden implanted hunger for beauty should 
have a larger recognition in the worship of the 
Sanctuary. We do not plead so much for the wor¬ 
ship of beauty as to enjoy and express the beauty 
of holiness in worship. All nature proclaims 
this truth, but how lightly we regard it. One of 
our living poets has called attention to it anew, 
in a stately lyric, in which she sings the beauty 
of creation: 

Thine is the loveliness of every rose, 

And Thine the velvet on the white moth’s wings; 

Thine is the scented foam the sea wind blows. 

And Thine the April song the robin sings; 

Scarcely we heed the beauty Thou hast made— 
Beauty of stars that set the night with gold; 

Beauty intangible of sun and shade— 

These are the wonder gifts we lightly hold. 

The reason why we hold the beautiful wonder- 
gifts of God so lightly is because of our irrev¬ 
erence of thought and deafness of soul. The 
peaceful pipings of the birds, the musical whispers 
of the breeze, the thunder of the rushing cataract, 
and the voice of the mighty deep all strike a respon¬ 
sive chord in the truly devout soul. But when we 
approach God, the All Beautiful and All Good, 


THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS 


135 


in the Sanctuary, there is often lacking not merely 
good taste, but that reverence and awe of spirit 
that best befit us as we bow before Him in worship. 
It is the spirit that counts in all real worship: and 
a beautiful spirit will seek if possible to express 
itself in beautiful forms. Personally, I would 
rather be a Covenanter and worship God on the 
bleak hillsides of Scotland than present to Him a 
worship amid gorgeous ritual that was not sin¬ 
cere and from the heart. All true worship is 
not so much elaborate ritual as the surrender of 
ourselves without reserve to the Sovereign of 
our lives. There can be no beauty of holiness 
in worship without reverence, reality, and broth¬ 
erly love. 


BEAUTY IN WORK 

The beauty of holiness should also find expres¬ 
sion in our work. When the mind is renewed, and 
the heart cleansed, every common duty becomes as 
the steps of a new Jacob's Ladder, so that “ Earth 
is crammed with heaven, and every common bush 
aflame with God.” 

The meaning of this is that, into the day’s toil 
there is to be put loving and untiring service. 
Everything we touch and handle, whether behind 
the counter, in the office, no less than in the pulpit, 
is to be done in the spirit of devotion and submis¬ 
sion to God. 

Some time ago a Welsh pastor received into the 


136 


THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS 


membership of his church, a shoemaker, on confes¬ 
sion of faith, to whom the pastor said when extend¬ 
ing the right hand of fellowship: “Take care, 
John, that you wax your threads more carefully, 
that you draw your seams more closely, and that 
your work be done more to the glory of that Master 
to whom you now dedicate your life.” That is the 
beauty of holiness in daily work, and there is ample 
scope for its expression. It was Charles Kingsley 
who said: “ Beauty is a wayside Sacrament, God’s 
handwriting. Welcome it in every fair face, fair 
sky, and fair flower, and thank Him for it, who is 
the Author of all loveliness.” We can scarcely 
wonder that in Kingsley’s last hour on earth he was 
overheard saying several times, “ How beautiful 
is God.” 

Since the days of Kingsley no man has pro¬ 
claimed the absolute value of the beauty of holiness 
in common life, with greater power of philosophic 
argument than the Dean of Tondon, Dean Inge. 
Dean Inge has had the courage to think this sub¬ 
ject out for himself, and declares he has found the 
values of life that are worth while in Beauty, 
Truth, and Goodness, which he considers are one. 
No breath from the class rooms where Einstein’s 
theories are being studied can shake the faith of 
Dean Inge in these verities. His spirit of the Uni¬ 
verse is absolute Beauty, absolute Truth, and abso¬ 
lute Goodness. In view of this belief he considers 
that the new type of Christianity will be more 


THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS 


137 


Christian than the old, because it will be more beau¬ 
tiful, more ethical, and more moral. He has been 
called a Neo-Platonist, which is true, but he is 
something more. He is a type and representative 
of those who are learning the value of the new 
currency in religion, and are prepared to look on 
the universe as a thought of God. This does not 
prohibit him from ascending into communion with 
the Universal Spirit, whispering the name of Jesus. 
By the presence and power in his soul of the All 
Beautiful, the All True, and the All Good, he ad¬ 
dresses the Infinite Being as Father. 

Consider how this ministry of beauty in work . 
makes for the moral improvement of man. It ap¬ 
peals to his best by providing the only pleasure 
which is perhaps wholly unselfish. The love of 
beauty, when it is pure, is free from the desire of 
possession, in the sense of ownership. It is grati¬ 
fied by observation and enjoyment. A man does 
not desire to possess a glorious sunset, or a fairy 
rainbow in the midst of Niagara, or a flower shop; 
he just drinks in the beauty, and is helped to be a 
better man. I heard of a merchant recently who, 
though one of the busiest men in a big city, yet 
finds time, after a hurried luncheon, to look into a 
picture gallery or flower shop, or in some other 
way to get a touch of the beautiful into his crowded 
day. His argument is, and it is surely valid, that 
as he dreads becoming a mere machine, fit only for 
grinding out office work, he feels the necessity of 


138 


THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS 


keeping his finer faculties alive and sensitive if he 
is to be a really good workman. Just as his face 
needs daily bathing in fresh water, so his spirit 
needs this daily bath in the realm of the beautiful, 
amid the toil of his working hours. Which things 
are an allegory, and more than an allegory. We 
should not neglect the ministry of beauty in our 
every day life. There are some people whom I 
have known and they became so utilitarian in their 
every movement that they would not walk a dozen 
yards out of their beaten daily path to and from 
business, even to see the most glorious sunset, or 
sunrise, thus confessing that the sunrise glories had 
faded from their shrivelled souls. They would not 
take time in the rush of life to examine a beautiful 
picture. They would not turn aside from the ugly 
and narrow thoroughfare to walk among the green 
grass and budding trees, on which the insect life of 
early summer furnishes a study in the works of 
God. It was once said of Leigh Hunt that if he 
had caught sight of a golden guinea lying on the 
grass and rushed to it thinking that it was a but¬ 
terfly, he was the only man alive who would have 
been disappointed to find it was only a guinea. 
Most of us would have reconciled ourselves to 
the situation with more equanimity. Yet man 
does not live by the material alone. As we 
watch in the summer season the day’s farewell to 
the evening in the glory of the sunset—what do 
we see? 


THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS 


139 


We see the Artist change His tone 
Till the brighter tints have softer grown; 

And as we gaze on the picture fair. 

We see the Hand of the Master there. 

BEAUTY IN CHARACTER 

The ministry of beauty should find expression in 
personal character. Indeed it must enter into char¬ 
acter if it is to worthily express itself in worship 
and in work. In the religious life, as in all life, 
there is a fitness of things, but alas! incongruity is 
often the order of the day, and this incongruity 
arises from all kinds of false conceptions of God, 
and the Christian religion. 

There is a delightful story told of Lyman Beech¬ 
er’s young wife, who, when taken by her husband 
to a somewhat inaccessible parish in New England, 
and finding the manse bare and uninviting, started 
at once to make it beautiful and attractive as pos¬ 
sible. From her wedding gifts she brought forth 
some unbleached muslin, which she tacked over the 
floor of the living room and then upon a soft 
neutral background she painted pink roses with 
long sprays of green leaves. It was an altogether 
worthy piece of work for one who was to be the 
Mother of Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet 
Beecher Stowe, both artists of the first water. But 
when her husband’s poor parishioners came to see 
her they refused to cross the doorstep lest they 
might walk on the lovely flowers. Of course they 
were all proud of the achievement of their min- 


140 


THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS 


ister’s bride, but they were greatly troubled in their 
consciences at what they considered her daring. 
What was their trouble? Their trouble was that 
they did not think that she could have the little 
touch of beauty in her home and heaven as well. 
They said to her: “ Do you think you can have 
this and heaven, too, ” Let us not blame them un¬ 
duly. Perhaps a more profitable occupation would 
be to turn our thoughts in the direction of our own 
personal life and ask: “Am I, by an unworthy 
character, playing traitor to the beauty of holi¬ 
ness ? ” There is not only a right way and a wrong 
way of doing everything, but there is a beautiful 
and unbeautiful way as well, and often the un¬ 
beautiful is so unfitting that it suggests deterior¬ 
ation of character, through some lack of moral 
sensibility. 

For example—who would sew a width of sack¬ 
cloth in front of a royal robe of silk? Who would 
erect a stye in the chancel of some splendid cathe¬ 
dral? Who would offer withered flowers to an 
ardent lover or a dear friend? It is enough to say 
of such things that they are unfitting, unbecoming, 
out of place. And yet nowhere should the fitness 
of things be more manifest than in the behaviour 
of Christian character. Perfect taste, perfect bal¬ 
ance, and perfect beauty are to be cultivated as the 
ideal to approximate, so that life may be rendered 
harmonious with the spirit of the Gospel. 

As we have decided to take to our hearts a Gos- 


THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS 


141 


pel full of heavenly charms, let us mark out from 
our conduct everything that is not in keeping 
with it. Remove the harsh line from the poem. 
Cut away the mouldy berry from the grapes. It is 
a great thing to keep the ideal of the Gospel high. 
The late Dr. Joseph Parker asks, “ Do we admire 
the Gospel, and are we touched by its beauty, yet 
living in some secret sin?” How does the great 
preacher stigmatize such a course of conduct? He 
says such conduct is “ High thought, and low life: 
head of gold and feet of clay: the morning vow 
broken by the evening’s sin and shame.” How 
true is this, but how unbecoming! How lacking in 
the personal character we should manifest! 

It is a fact that a person may be upset for a 
whole day by the harsh way in which you may call 
him in the morning, or you may give him a beauti¬ 
ful start by the cordiality of your greeting. There 
is an old proverb which says, “ He who makes 
goodness disagreeable commits high treason against 
virtue.” It was a gracious Quaker lady who, when 
asked what gave her such a beautiful complexion, 
and to suggest the cosmetique she used, to some of 
her younger friends, quietly replied: “ I use for 
the lips, truth: for the voice, prayer: for the eyes, 
pity: for the hands, charity: for the figure, up- 
righteousness: and for the heart, love.” In other 
words, the beauty of holiness had found expres¬ 
sion in her personal character. 

The characteristics of the Gospel should be more 


142 


THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS 


taken to heart by all. To be cheerless, when the 
Gospel is so cheery: to be slow, and mean, when 
the Gospel is so forward, and generous: to be un¬ 
beautiful, and deformed, when the Gospel is so 
lovely: how unfitting in all those who owe every¬ 
thing to Christ, and His Gospel of Grace. The 
Gospel reproves, while it saves. It saves by lifting 
what is good in character to what is better, and 
what is better to what is best. 

BEAUTY THAT LASTS 

The beauty of holiness is the only beauty that is 
permanent. Beautiful flowers will fade: sweet 
music will cease: the fair faces we have loved are 
taken from us and laid away in the grave. But 
the beauty of holiness will live on and on forever; 
it is the beauty of the redeemed within the veil. 
Socrates must have had a glimpse of this truth 
when he prayed: “ O, God, make me beautiful 
within.” 

This beauty that is permanent cannot be achieved 
in solitude, it must be sought in society and service, 
when the soul is freed from self-seeking. In his 
own way as an artist, Keats hints at this truth in 
his famous poem entitled: “ Endymion.” Taking 
that old moon-myth of classic lore he filled it with 
all the teeming riches of his own genius and in¬ 
sight, but two great truths may be traced through 
the poem, written in the dialect of angels, rather 
than men. One of these is that the love of all the 


THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS 


143 


manifold beings on earth is in its nature identical 
with the love of eternal beauty: and the other, that 
the soul seeking eternal beauty, being purified, and 
made free from self. In other words, mortal love 
is needed to humanize the heavenly, and the heav¬ 
enly to hallow the mortal, so that the two at their 
highest and best, are one, uniting the love of God 
and the love of man, which leads to a beauty of 
character that is fadeless. 

When Plato said: “ All that is good is beauti¬ 
ful,” he also got near the heart of things. For 
what is beauty but God’s seal upon the universe, 
and art—man’s interpretation of it. One render¬ 
ing of the word beauty in our text is “ pleasant¬ 
ness,” “ let the pleasantness of the Lord, our God, 
be upon us.” There are some people good, but 
scarcely amiable. But the beauty of holiness car¬ 
ries with it the idea of completeness, in the sense 
of progress towards perfection. The existence of 
beauty shows that God ever works towards perfec¬ 
tion, so that things which are frail and short-lived 
are adorned with beauty no less than things that 
are durable. 

This idea of perfection is included in the Gospel 
of Christ. By the atonement of Christ, and the 
ministry of His Spirit, God has made provision for 
imparting to man an all round completeness. We 
are offered in the Gospel of Christ a full salvation, 
a salvation not alone from the penalty due to the 
grosser sins, but from all that debases the spirit, 


144 


THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS 


stains the character, or mars the beauty and devel¬ 
opment of the soul’s best life. 

The moral beauty of God is His Holiness, and 
suggest the union and perfection of all His attri¬ 
butes. But how can we dare to gaze on that beauty 
and blending glory? There is an old legend of an 
artist who once prayed that the veil might be lifted, 
if only for a moment, so that he might gaze on 
Absolute Beauty. His prayer was answered, but 
it paralysed his hand, and broke his heart. After 
that glimpse of eternal beauty he was so over¬ 
whelmed that his finest work became a daub, and 
he had no heart to go on. Mercifully that awful 
Presence is veiled, so that we may have liberty to 
live our little lives; but we can only speak of the 
Eternal Beauty with faltering lips, because of our 
frailty and sin. 

What then must we do. We cannot look long at 
God without being dazzled, but let us look at Jesus, 
who is the express image of His Person, and in 
Jesus, God’s beauty is reflected, and made manifest. 
On the continent of Europe there is a church which 
tourists often visit. The ceiling at one part is cov- 
ever with paintings from the hands of the great 
masters, but they are so high up the visitor cannot 
look at them without fatigue. By the simple device 
of placing a mirror in a suitable position, the 
pictures are reflected in the mirror, and the visitor 
can examine their beauty without fatigue at his 
leisure. So is the Divine Beauty, Divine Glory, 


THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS 145 

Divine Holiness reflected in the life of Jesus, in a 
form which we can contemplate without being 
dazzled and overawed. St. Paul’s words are a 
good application and explanation of this whole sub¬ 
ject : “ We all with open face behold as in a mirror, 
the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same 
image (the same beauty) from glory to glory, even 
as by the spirit of the Lord.” 


X 


THE LANDMARKS OF LIFE 

" Then Samuel took a stone and set it between Mizpah 
and Shen and called the name of it Bbenezer, saying, 
Hitherto hath the Lord helped us .”—i Samuel vii: 12. 

T HE prophet Samuel never did a greater thing 
in his life than when he raised this memorial 
stone as a landmark of God’s dealings with 
His people. You may call it sentiment if you will, 
but who can deny its value. A sentiment is a thought 
prompted by emotion, or a feeling quickened 
through some new experience, but are not our finest 
thoughts so inspired from time to time? Without 
sentiment life remains cold, formal and friendless. 
There is no lilt in life apart from sentiment, no 
cadence, no charm, no glow, no landmark, no red- 
letter day, in the story of our sojourn on earth. 

The simple fact is every life has its landmarks of 
one sort or another. We may raise no monument, 
no monolith, no mount to commemorate them, but 
they are there just the same. For example, there 
is the landmark of Bethel, the place where a youth 
or a maiden wakes up to the reality of a living 
and loving God. There is the landmark of Peniel, 
the place where one wrestles with God in prayer, 


146 


THE LANDMARKS OF LIFE 147 

and prevails. There is the landmark of Mara, with 
its well of bitter waters, where the heart is strained 
by some great sorrow, almost to the point of break¬ 
ing. There is the landmark of Elim, with its 
fountains of sweet waters and its kindly shade of 
three score and ten palm trees. There is the land¬ 
mark of Pisgah, with its vision of the Promised 
Land. There is also the landmark of Ebenezer, 
which has a place, and a well-defined place, on the 
map of every human life, that has any experience 
of God. It is the landmark known as Ebenezer we 
are to consider at present. When starting out on 
a new venture we should all erect this landmark, as 
we exclaim: “ Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.” 
Such an experience would make life worth while. 

GEOGRAPHICAL, LAW 

The mapping out of human life in this fashion is 
not a mere fancy of the passing hour , but a relig¬ 
ious duty. While all days are alike on the calendar, 
they are psychologically different, carrying in their 
bosom widely different motives and incentives. The 
close of the year is such an occasion; it appeals to 
the best possible in each of us. In all ages the peo¬ 
ple of God have discovered this geographical law in 
the spiritual world. It is an interesting study to 
trace how Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians and 
the writer of that wonderful letter to the Hebrews, 
have used Old Testament landmarks to point the 
progress of the upward way. Like the ancient 


148 


THE LANDMARKS OF LIFE 


people of God, we, too, are on the march, and one 
of our helpful resting places is Ebenezer, where 
we erect our monument to God and identify our 
lives with the things that count. It is wonderful to 
think on how man has endeavoured to associate 
himself with the permanent landmarks of Nature. 
In this man shows unmistakably the two-fold side 
of his own nature—his littleness and his greatness. 
It reveals his littleness because every such endeav¬ 
our is a confession on his part of the brevity of our 
human life; it also shows man’s greatness, because 
he is capable of investing with a halo of romance 
wild glens, barren rocks, rushing rivers, old monu¬ 
ments erected by human hands to commemorate 
the past. Now all this has its spiritual counterpart 
in the story of the soul’s life and experience. And 
Ebenezer is that experience where a man climbs the 
hill of life, takes a brief rest, erects a memorial in 
his memory, and looks back on the past with a song 
on his lips and in his heart. Yet in looking back, 
he does not forget to look up, and to look on, as he 
braces himself for the tasks that lie ahead. 

The: backward took 

Ebenezer, as a landmark in the soid’s life, is a 
good place from which to look back. It is the place 
where we say: “Hitherto hath the Lord helped 
us,” for this “ Hitherto ” covers all the past. This 
means perspective, and helps one to understand the 
ministry of the years that are gone. What a story 


149 


THE LANDMARKS OF LIFE 

this old Stone of Help had to tell of the wonderful 
dealings of God! It looked back on the patient 
work of Samuel, who for twenty years had been 
leading the people homeward to the God of their 
fathers: twenty years of quiet, unobtrusive toil, 
like that of the coral insects, building from the 
ocean bed until at length the palm-clad island ap¬ 
pears. It looked back on that memorable convoca¬ 
tion of Israel at Mizpeh, when their idols were cast 
away, and when water was poured out before the 
Lord, which in the language of Oriental symbolism 
meant that their souls were poured out in tears and 
humble confession of sin to God. Above all, it 
looked back to that memorable moment, where, as 
the Philistines drew near to battle, “the Lord 
thundered on the Philistines with a great thunder, 
and discomfited them, so that they were smitten 
before Israel.” If that old monument had a mem¬ 
ory, as well as eyes and ears, it would never forget 
that great victory, witnessed between Mizpeh and 
Shen. It would recall to them the fact that on that 
same spot some twenty years earlier there had been 
fought the Flodden Field of Israel, in the great 
battle of Apek, where the people of Israel had been 
stricken into the dust before their foes. 

What living encouragement there is in all this 
for us today! Some of you at this hour may be 
traversing battlefields marked by defeat. Your 
hopes have been dashed to the ground. You may 
have been overthrown by some besetting sin. Yet, 


150 


THE LANDMARKS OF LIFE 


as you review the past, you are called to take heart 
of hope. At the very place you have fallen you 
may conquer. The rocks which saw the leaves of 
autumn swirl in eddies around you shall yet behold 
the young green of spring and the mature fruitage 
of the summer. On looking back today from the 
landmark of Ebenezer we see that the path tra¬ 
versed was more direct than it appeared to be. 
There were times when we seemed to go back, sea¬ 
sons when we felt that we were going down; but 
now we see that in going back we were going for¬ 
ward ; that in going down, we were going up; that 
our hindrances were our helps; that our disappoint¬ 
ments were our dearest friends; that our failures 
were our finest successes, and that our apparent 
defeats were our most decisive victories. Twenty 
years before Ebenezer had been the scene of defeat ; 
now it is the place of victory. This is the glory of 
our religion: it raises the stone of Ebenezer on the 
fatal field of Apek and turns the Mizpeh of defeat 
into the morning of victory. Yes; this landmark 
of Ebenezer is indeed a good place from which to 
look back on the past. In the long chain of helpful¬ 
ness there is no missing link, for God’s mercies 
have been one unbroken succession. 

THE UPWARD LOOK 

Ebenezer, as a landmark in life, is also a good 
place from which to look up. “ Hitherto hath the 
Lord helped us.” From this second point of view 


THE LANDMARKS OF LIFE 


151 


the emphatic word is “ The Lord.” If the gods of 
the Philistines had helped them they had been dis¬ 
credited and destroyed and so at best give but 
flimsy ground for exaltation to those who trusted 
in them. If the people of Israel had been delivered 
by their own prowess there would have been little 
cause for congratulation or joy; for the strength 
of man is as grass and all the goodliness thereof as 
the flower of the field. But it was the Lord who 
had been their Helper, the great Jehovah, the I Am, 
the unchangeable and everlasting God who fainteth 
not, neither is weary. He was their hope and guar¬ 
antee for their present experiences, as He had been 
their shelter in the days that were past. So this 
landmark of life is a good place from which to 
look up to the Living God in Christ. 

Not long ago some one was commiserated on the 
smallness of his garden when he replied: “ You are 
quite mistaken; it may not be very long and it may 
not be very wide, but it is infinitely high; it goes 
up to the Heavens of God.” That was surely a 
fine answer, full of rich suggestion and spiritual 
significance. So although Samuel could only look 
back on some twenty years of leadership and fifty 
years of existence, he could look up to Heaven and 
realize that ever with him was the everlasting, ever- 
living and ever-loving God. “ Hitherto hath the 
Lord helped us.” To our Divine Helper let us 
here look up. 

It is this sense of the Divine Presence that takes 


152 


THE LANDMARKS OF LIFE 


away the sting from all life’s disappointments and 
defeats. The years may pass, but He abides. Life 
glides away, “ like a brook forever changing,” but 
He remains. We frail mortals come and go, like 
the ships that pass in the night, but God is as fixed 
as the stars. Fathers and mothers and the friends 
of our childhood—how many of them are gone, but 
the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to ever¬ 
lasting ; it endureth for evermore. Whittier in one 
of his tenderest songs has raised a landmark that 
is surely an Ebenezer from which he looked back 
and looked up : 

Enough that blessings undeserved 
Have marked my erring track; 

That whereso’er my feet have swerved, 

His chastenings turned me back; 

i 

That more and more a Providence 
Of love is understood. 

Making the springs of time and sense 
Sweet with eternal good. 

I know not where His islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air, 

I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care. 

' the Forward look 

Ebenezer is, further, a good place from which 
to look forward. If this stone has a retrospect, it 
has also a prospect. It looks not only backward, 
but forward. It says to us, “ As God has helped, 


THE LANDMARKS OF LIFE 


153 


so He will help.” The “ Hitherto ” is changed into 
the “ Henceforward.” Indeed, it is very little use 
our looking back, or looking up, if we are not pre¬ 
pared to look forward, so that a good maxim for 
every life is “ Never do your work twice over.” 
As soon as one fight for God is finished, get en¬ 
gaged in another without delay. Perhaps this 
maxim might be supplemented by another: “ Or¬ 
ganize your victories,” and I might add, organize 
your defeats as well. The only justification for 
looking back, or looking up, is that we may the bet¬ 
ter look forward. 

THE TRYSTING PEACE 

Ebenezer is therefore the starting point of a new 
and better experience; it is the soul’s trysting place 
for a new stretch of the road. In recent years two 
popular pictures—companions to each other—have 
been given to the world by Marcus Stone, a well- 
known modern artist. The first represents a tall, 
graceful girl, dressed in white, leaning against the 
massive trunk of an old woodland tree. Her large 
plumed hat is held in her left hand, which hangs 
listlessly by her side, while her head is bowed, rest¬ 
ing on her right hand, as she leans over two hearts 
that intersect each other, carved on the bark of the 
tree. It does not require a vivid imagination to 
reconstruct her story. Once in the happy past her 
sailor lover carved that simple symbol, for here in 
this woodland glade they had pledged their love 


154 


THE LANDMARKS OF LIFE 


each to the other. This picture was called “ The 
Tree of Trysting,” a landmark in the happy life of 
the young lovers. But the artist in the companion 
picture depicts a scene that looks to the future. He 
has termed it “ His Ship in Sight,” and across the 
blue sea can be seen the vessel speeding along, 
which bears her sailor lover, so that soon they will 
meet again beneath the “ Tree of Trysting,” which 
looks to the past and the present, and also to the 
future, the happy future, in which two lives are 
guided by one great devotion. 

The application of all is, use the present oppor¬ 
tunity to make your tryst with God. He says: 
“ My son, give Me thine heart.” “ Ye are not 
your own; ye are bought with a price. Do not 
forget that a new year on the calendar may be the 
same old year in the heart. But He who from 
the throne says: “ Behold I make all things new,” 
can give you a new nature and new ideals, so that 
the new year may be a real landmark for God in 
your pilgrimage of life. 


Printed in United States of America. 


TIMELY ESSAYS AND STUDIES 


NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS 

Author of “Great Books as Life-Teachers.** 

Great Men as Prophets of a New Era 

$1.50. 

Dr. Hillis* latest book strikes a popular chord. It 
fairly pulses with life and human sympathy. He has 
a large grasp of things and relations, a broad culture, 
a retentive memory and splendid imagination, and there 
are few writers to-day with so large an audience assured 
in advance. The subjects include: Dante; Savonarola; 
William the Silent; Oliver Cromwell; John Wesley; John 
Milton; Garibaldi; John Ruskin, etc. 


THOS. R. MITCHELL , M.A., B.D. 

The Drama of Life 

A Series of Reflections on Shakespeare’s 
“Seven Ages” Introduction by Nellie L. McClung. 

$1.25. 

A fresh, stimulating discussion of old themes. Mr. 
Mitchell handles his subject with unusual directness, 
bringing to its discussion clarity of thought and lucidity 
of expression which has already won the enthusiastic 
endorsement of Sir William Robertson Nicoll, Chas. W. 
Gordon, D.D., (Ralph Connor) Archdeacon Cody and 
Prof. Francis G. Peabody. 

D.MACDOUGALL KING , M.B. 

Author of “The Battle with Tuberculosis ** 

Nerves and Personal Power 

Some Principles of Psychology as Applied to 
Conduct and Health. With Introduction by Hon. 
W. L. Mackenzie King. $2.00 

Premier King says: “My brother has, I think helped 
to reinforce Christian teaching by showing wherein recent 
medical and scientific researches are revealing the founda¬ 
tions of Christian faith and belief in directions hitherto 
unexplored and unknown.—The world needs the assurance 
this book can scarcely fail to bring.” 


REV. R. E. SMITH Waco, Texas. 

Christianity and the Race Problem 

$1.25. 

A sane, careful study of the Race problem in the South, 
written by a born Southerner, the son of a slave-owner 
and Confederate soldier. Mr. Smith has lived all his 
life among negroes, and feels that he is capable of seeing 
both sides of the problem he undertakes to discuss. 







INSPIRATION AND SELF-HELP 


CHARLES E. JEFFERSON , D.D. 

Under Twenty 

Messages to Big Boys and Girls. $1.50. 

Clothed in direct and simple language, Dr. Jefferson’s 
messages to young folk enshrine truths of the highest 
import, and point towards the attainment of life’s highest 
ideals. Out of his rich treasure-house, he brings forth 
“things both new and old.” He is an acknowledged 
master of clear, unmistakable presentation, which finds 
ample expression in this admirable series of addresses. 

JOHN T. FARIS, D.D. 

Men Who Conquered 

$1.25 

The new volume in “Making Good Series” contains 
many hints on how to gain real success from the lives 
of men of modern days, such as William E. Dodge, 
Jacob Riis, Charles A. Eastman, Isaac Pitman, George 
W. Childs, John Muir, etc. 

ARTHUR E. ROBERTS 

Scout Executive, Cincinnati Council, Boy 
Scouts of America. 

Emancipation of Youth 

$1.00. 

Beginning with the belief that most lads come into 
the world possible of being directed and developed into 
lives of normalcy and usefulness, Mr. Roberts proceeds 
to discuss such aspects of his subject as: Mind-mak¬ 
ing; Heredity; Bases of Habit; Periods of Growth; 
the Attitude and Influence of the Church, the School 
and the Home of the Boy; Adolescence and Leisure. 
James E. West, Chief Scout Executive (N. Y.), says: 
“I am quite enthusiastic over it. It is thoroughly sound 
—decidedly worth while.” 

HOWARD BEMENT Professor of English, 

- The Hill School. 

Old Man Dare’s Talks to College Men 

75c. 

“Old Man Dare” is not an elderly person. The quali¬ 
fying adjective betokens, not age but affection and respect 
felt for him by a number of College classmen to whom 
he gave a series of simple, unaffected talks such as may 
be held as likely to stimulate a lively sense of fair play, 
promote honorable dealing, develop character and a cor¬ 
responding revulsion for mean, shabby conduct which 
falls below the standard of a man. These sane, straight 
talks of “Old Man Dare” form the contents of this 
present volume. 








STRIKING ADDRESSES 


JOHN HENRY JOWETT,D.D . 

God Our Contemporary 

A Series of Complete Addresses $1.50. 

Among the pulpit-giants of to-day Dr. Jowett has been 
given a high place. Every preacher will want at once 
this latest product of his fertile mind. It consists of a 
series of full length sermons which are intended to show 
that only in God as revealed to us in Jesus Christ can 
We find the resources to meet the needs of human life. 

SIDNEY BERRY, M.A, 

Revealing Light $1.50. 

A volume of addresses by the successor to Dr. Jowett 
at Carr’s Dane Church, Birmingham, the underlying aim 
of which is to show what the Christian revelation means 
in relation to the great historic facts of the Faith and 
the response which those facts must awaken in the hearts 
of men to-day. Every address is an example of the 
best preaching of this famous “preacher to young men.’* 

FREDERICK C. SPURR 

Last Minister of Regent’s Park Chapel, London. 

The Master Key 

A Study in World-Problems $1.35. 

A fearless, clearly-reasoned restatement of the terms of 
the. Christian Gospel and its relation to the travail through 
which the world is passing. Mr. Spurr is a man in the 
vanguard of religious thought, yet just as emphatically as 
any thinker of the old school, he insists on one Physician 
able to heal the wounds and woes of humanity. 

RUSSELL H. CON WELL, D.D. 

Pastor Baptist Temple, Philadelphia. 

Unused Powers $1.25. 

To “Acres of Diamonds,’* “The Angel’s Lily,” “Why 

Lincoln Laughed,’* “How to Live the Christ Life,” and 
many other stirring volumes. Dr. Conwell has just added 
another made up of some of his choicest addresses. Dr. 
Conwell speaks, as he has always spoken, out of the ex¬ 
perimental knowledge and practical wisdom of a man, who 
having long faced the stark realities of life, has been 
exalted thereby. 

GAIUS GLENN ATKINS, D.D. 

Minister of the First Congregational Church, 

Detroit, Michigan. 

The Undiscovered Country $1.50. 

A group of addresses marked by distinction of style 
and originality of approach. The title discourse furnisnes 
a central theme to which those following stand in rela¬ 
tion. Dr. Atkins’ work, throughout, is marked by clarity 
of presentation, polished diction and forceful phrasing. 








PRAYER, DEVOTIONAL, ETC 


J. D. JONES , D.D. Author of "St. Paul’s Certainties.” 

The King of Love 

Meditations on The Twenty-third Psalm. $1.25. 

Dr. Jones is one of the greatest of living preachers, and 
on both sides of the Atlantic, his splendid gifts are fully 
recognized. The clear, eloquent, and deeply devotional 
character of his work makes it specially interesting. The 
meditations literally breathe counsel and enheartenment. 

LYNN HAROLD HOUGH , D.D, 

The Strategy of the Devotional Life 

75c. 

Amid the vast life of a great city, the problem of sus¬ 
taining true spiritual life is a problem of increasing grav¬ 
ity and difficulty. The ‘‘strategy” of the process as Dr. 
Hough so ably calls it, is discussed in the pages of his 
new book, with convincing clarity. 

HE NR Y VAN DYKE , D. D. 

Thy Sea is Great—-Our Boats Are Small 

and Other Hymns of To-day. 50c. 

A number of new hymns written by a recognized master 
of true lyrical expression. These verses Dr. van Dyke de¬ 
scribes as an attempt to give expression to certain present 
day aspirations not possibly finding utterance before. 

FRANK W. GUNSAULUS , D.D, 

Prayers of Frank W. Gunsaulus 

$1.25. 

“Dr. Gunsaulus was one of the most richly-endowed 
preachers of his generation, and his prayers reflect a mind 
and heart wondrously attuned to the harmonies of the 
Highest.”— Christian Work. 

J. PATERSON-SMYTH, LL. D ., D.C.L. 

Author of “The Gospel of the Hereafter.** 

On the Rim of the World 

75c 

“These answers to questions about the hereafter are 
based cm the New Testament. Here is a book that makes 
for faith and courage and hope and sanity. It was not 
written to convince unbelievers, but to console and com¬ 
fort Christians whose knowledge is altogether too small on 
this most vital matter. And this task the author has well 
performed.”— C. U. World. 


































































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